
Class __^_K_^iO. 
Book H "Vb^ 



Copyright N"- 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 







^ 



TEN DAYS 
ABROAD 



BY 



H. S. FULLER 




-^> j ''j, 'j 



NEW YORK : 

THE SCHOOL NEWS COMPANY 
156 Fifth avenue 

1901 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONQRCSS, 
Two Copies Received 

APR. 18 1901 

COPYRKJMT ENTRY 

CLVkSS^XXo. Hm. 
COPY B. 






Copyright, 1901, 

BY 

H. S. Fuller 



• • • • • 



• ,» ••• •• 



»-• •.• 



Press, 122 W. 14th Street, New York 



IN REMEMBRANCE OF 

MANY PLEASANT JOURNEYS, 

THIS BOOK 

IS INSCRIBED TO 



MY WIFE 



This narrative grew out of a few letters relat- 
ing the writer's pleasant experiences last August, 
on a short trip abroad for recreation and 
rest. Several months are not now required for 
such a journey. One may see in a week more 
than was possible in a month's time, half a 
century ago, and enjoy it fully if the mind is 
passive, and the purpose not simply to attempt 
how much may be accomplished in a short space. 
These sketches the writer hopes may help others 
whose recreation intervals are short to as thorough 
enjoyment as he obtained from this trip. New 
people and customs when mingled with the asso- 
ciations of a vivid past from which all our present 
life has come, give an agreeable and healthful 
stimulus to the fancies which carry us out of, and 
away from the daily routine of habit and cares. 

New York, March 21, 1901. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter P^'^g^ 

I. — Sailing of the Minnehaha, - - - 11 

II.— In Mid Ocean, _ _ - . _ 21 

III. — In London Town, ----- 35 

IV. — Old London Memories, - - - - 49 

V. — Over the Channel, ----- 61 

VI. — Shakespeare's Home, - _ - - 72 

VII.— Kenilworth Traditions, - - - - 84 

VIII.— The Ride from Birming-ham, - - - 95 

IX.— Edinboro' Town, - - - - - 105 

X. — Throug-h the Trossachs, - - - - 114 

XI.— In Glasgow Streets, . - .. 124 

XII.— The North Irish Coast, - - - - 133 

XIII.— On the North Atlantic, - - - - 145 

XIV.— Sandy Hook, - 157 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



One of the Lions — Frontispiece^ - _ . 

From a Photograph of one of the Landseer Lions at 
the foot of Nelson's Statue, Trafalgar Square. 

Down the Hudson, ------ 

From Photograph taken by Dr. F. M. Banta on 
the Minnehaha's Maiden Trip. 

Sunday on Deck, ---___ 

The Ocean Pathways, _ _ - - _ 

Southern Route of the Minnehaha, Westward. 
Northern Route of the Furnessia from Glasgow 
returning. 

From the Strand to St. Paul's, 
A leaf from FYy's London Guide. 

Parliament Houses from Westminster Bridg-e, 

Oliver Cromwell, -_-_-. 

From Photograph of Thornycroft's Statue, Parlia- 
ment Buildings facing Westminster Abbey. 

Old Paris — Vignette, _____ 

Griffin — Vignette, _--_-_ 

From Notre Dame T>nver. 

"Tanks!"— Vignette, ----- 

Kenilworth Castle, 

The Banquet Hall and Mortimer Tower. 



Page 

36 



13- 



19 

23 



40 

55 " 
58 I. 

63 

65 

71 
92 ^ 



A Birming-ham Passeng-er — Vig-nette, - - 96 

John Ball Preaching- — Vignette, _ . .. loO 
Engraved from an Old Print. 

Edinburgh Castle, ----- 104 ^ 

A Highlander — Vignette, - - 107 

The Bailie Nicol Jarvie — Vignette, - 118 

Loch Katrine, - - - - - - 123 *^ 

From Roderick Dhu's "Watch Tower. 

The University of Glasgow, - - - ■ 127 fi- 



TEN DAYS ABROAD 




SAILING OF THE MINNEHAHA 

I AST ''ashore" had been called — the 
siren had torn from the air its final, 
uncanny shriek. Then the gang-plank, 
which is not a gang-plank in modern 
steamers, but a huge suspension foot-bridge, was 
raised aloft. The last cable dropped, and our 
steamer, the Minnehaha, was an island, a 
leviathan in the water, parted from all human 
touch ; but still incompetent and helpless, though 
her twin screws churned the black waters of the 



12 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

slip into white foam, until two stout tugs had 
grappled with her — as ants will seize upon a 
mammoth lizard — puffing and churning foam all 
the while, as the great bulk, gathering impulse, 
widened the breach between herself and the pier 
— the world. 

Cameras on ship and wharf sprung their 
parting snap shots, and familiar faces were 
fading — as all faces that we care for will some 
day fade, w^hen Charon's dark skiff floats them 
out on the tide. A bugler with pink cheeks, and 
in white duck jacket, blew a farewell strain from 
the Captain's deck. And the melody, "Because I 
Loved You," touched a chord that brought 
spasmodic responses into more than one face 
among the cluster of waving handkerchiefs, 
grouped at the end of the pier, — though an 
irreverent, dark-featured youth of Germanic 
extraction beside me on the deck, hummed 
regardlessly : 'Td leave my happy home for 
thee," and straightway engaged me with the 
inquiry whether I spoke good French, or if I 
happened to know some pretty young woman 



LEAVING THE CITY 13 

on board who did, as he was modestly anxious 
to perfect his own accent during the voyage. 

When I had freed myself from his atten- 
tions the Minnehaha, girding up her sinews, 
had turned about in mid-stream, pointing 
down the Hudson. The tugs cutting loose moved 
in advance on either flank, puffy and consequential 
escorts to their big sister steamer starting forth 
on her maiden trip. She was more a sturdy Eng- 
lish lass than the lithe and laughing Indian maiden 
her namesake. Her buxom sides like a country 
beauty's towxred above city ferry boat and excur- 
sion steamer, displaying her dimensions proudly 
and to advantage beside the leaner flanks of the 
"fast liners." It was a bright, crisp summer 
morning. The hum and whistle of the great city 
had scarce begun as the cliff dwellings of Man- 
hattan went down on the sky line. The Bridge 
became a distant cobweb in the clouds. The pilot 
was taken up, and when the green banks of the 
Narrows and the sandy spit of the Hook had been 
passed, he was dropped with the last messages for 
home, and we sailed on still watching with a more 



14 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

tender interest the receding lines of shore. 

Our steamer, EngHsh built, flies the British 
colors, but with her name she should be an Amer- 
ican vessel. Her captain, officers and crew are 
stalwart young English sailors selected for their 
skill and service, thoiigh the stockholders are 
mostly Americans, with an American president, 
Bernard M. Baker of Baltimore. Plain John Rob- 
inson, the captain, large, hearty and robust 
in build and with a flush of good American beef 
in his wholesome and genial features, grew 
in authority as he paced the Captain's Bridge. 
The engineer, one of those cautious, careful 
Scotchmen whom Kipling has limned, had a sug- 
gestion of Admiral Sampson in his paler features. 
There were less than a hundred cabin passengers, 
a great family party, quartered with all modern 
comforts — and no steerage ; in the place of the 
steerage at the stern, where all odors were swept 
behind to sea, were stalls for the horses and cattle. 
The Minnehaha was laden, we were told, 
with one of the largest cargoes that ever left 
American shores. Stored away within her capa- 



OFF SANDY HOOK 15 

cious iron caverns were grain and corn by the 
hundred thousand bushels, and tons of cotton ; 
troops of horses, many of them groomed and fed 
as more priceless than the human freight, and a 
drove of a thousand cattle from the western 
plains occupied the stalls. 

A vast floating warehouse is the modern steam- 
er, and this one of the greatest of them, whose 
stores would provision an army or ransom a city. 
These huge steel trusses and broad iron plates 
must be touched with Arabian magic to float as 
feathers over the water, when, of themselves, 
they would plunge like cannon-shot to the bot- 
tomless depths of the ocean. The Minnehaha 
carries her burden on this, her maiden trip, as 
buoyantly as a birch canoe would carry an Indian 
maid. From her bows the salt, green waves curl 
with low murmurs, lapping and caressing her 
dark sides. Smoothly she cleaves the billows 
with no conscious strain or vibration, as a river 
steamer glides through the passes of the Hudson 
Highlands. In the quiet of the evening when the 
low of the "moo cow," the soft breath of kine, and 



i6 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

the fresh odor of hay, came from the stalls on the 
rear deck^ it was not difficult to believe these rol- 
ling, sapphire waters an illusion — that they were 
fields of rustling grain or purple alfalfa. Then 
the first sunset stretched a band of shell pink half 
way around the horizon encompassing this wav- 
ing plain, and the thin, gold crescent of the new 
moon over the spot where the sun had sunk, 
pointed the direction of the distant city and the 
port we had left. 

The passengers do not enter at once upon a 
familiar footing. Your Anglo-Saxon whether 
English or American is ever slow in warming up 
the cockles of his heart. But my German 
acquaintance in lieu of his choice for a French 
companion, secured others of his own sex 
with whom he walked the deck cheerfully in sun- 
shine and shade, their faces presently glowing 
with a rich vermilion, to peal in flakes ' a little 
later like the bursting jackets of well boiled po- 
tatoes. The dining table established more cordial 
relations. Its varied and enticing menu of fish 
and fowl, ''Hazel Hen," "Red Deer," and other 



THE CAPTAIN'S TABLE 17 

delicacies, was calculated to arouse epicurean 
curiosity, though somewhat gamey for ocean 
diet. Mark Twain and David Harum were 
favorite topics with the Captain. His table was 
a social center; and when he told his stories, his 
sides shook, the dishes rattled, and we all joined 
the laughter in sheer sympathy. On Sunday 
morning he read the Episcopal service, his voice 
taking a deeper-toned gravity, while the gold lace 
and uniform gave dignity to his figure, and a 
sense of greater security and confidence. His 
desk was draped for the occasion with the British 
flag, and the desk of the Purser who read part of 
the service, and who was an American from Bal- 
timore, was hung with the American colors. 

Sunday on shipboard at sea has an interest of 
its own. And an Episcopal service always seems 
to find an English audience in sympathy, and 
familiar with it. The ranchman from the plains, 
with long, black mustaches, the grizzly-browed 
Irish-American from the Klondike returning to 
visit his early home, and the elderly nurse from 
Central America, an infant in her arms, standing 



i8 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

at the doorway in the background — all without 
books — chanted the responses fervently in chorus 
with the passengers. The plea for Queen 
Victoria's health and welfare, and the Royal 
family's, was accompanied with that for the 
President of the United States, to which good 
Americans could subscribe. 

This day and hour the liturgy is chanted 
around the globe on every land and sea where 
the British colors fly. Not always, observed a 
traveler on deck afterward, under American or 
other national ensigns, but on British steamers it 
has become a custom, if it is not a requirement. 
The old English liturgists in the Prayer Book 
appear to have re-echoed the tone and the rhythm 
of the Psalms. And in the "Recessional," it seemed 
at this moment, Kipling has caught his refrain 
from the strong and serious old Puritan side, if 
it is the Psalm-singing side, of English or Anglo- 
Saxon nature, which finds response and its 
self-restraining influence here. 

All around the saloon of the steamer, set in 
its paneled walls of dark oak, were pictures of 




o 
W 
Q 

O 



SUNDAY ON SHIPBOARD 19 

American scenery, outlined in colors on the thick 
window crystal of the port casements — Brooklyn 
Bridge, Bartholdi Statue, views from Central 
Park, Minneapolis, Baltimore and Chicago. That 
Sunday morning was clear, the skies blue, the 
sun bright, the ocean mild and peaceful — no 
whisper in the waves of the fierce strifes on its 
distant African or Chinese coasts ; no newspapers 
or other human contrivance to disturb the calm, 
eternal sway of Nature. A whale plunged across 
our course spouting its spray, as if to vie with 
the Minnehaha's bow, or exchange salute with 
a bigger sister denizen of the deep, while the 
porpoises gamboled about the ship's sides in 
company, rubbing their backs fearlessly, the 
mariner told the landsmen, against her prow, 
as if her construction were for the sole mission 
of their fraternal gratification. 

A sense of unlimited sunshine, restfulness and 
relaxation filled the atmosphere. The wash of 
the sea and the throbbing pulsations of the 
steamer were the purring osculations of some 
mighty, domesticated feline. To the rhythm of 



20 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

the organ music, to the song and chanted re- 
sponses of this morning service, one could easily- 
fancy our great, laden argosy swinging gently; 
and the eye passing outward and far through 
the open, swaying ports, framed in the dark oak 
paneling, caught glimpses of sky and sea, sun-lit 
cloud and changing water — marine masterpieces 
more wonderful than those which hang in the 
famous galleries of earth. 



II 



IN MID OCEAN 



JT^ OR two days the Minnehaha followed 

^ , ^ a course due east from New York. 

^^81 Then she turned northeast on the 
great sea, a direction which the daily 
chart indicated would bring us at the expiration 
of a week, near to the entrance of the English 
Channel. Our bugler in his white-duck jacket 
which he always donned at such times, roused 
us early in the mornings, winding the reveille, 
through the long aisles of the cabin, repeating 
the strain with variations half an hour later. On 
German lines it was said, the custom is to vary 



22 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

those calls with simple, folk-lore airs — all of 
which are pleasanter sounds than a jangling bell, 
or the barbarous din of the copper tom-tom. 
Many of the passengers are out on deck before 
breakfast for exercise. One who is a member 
of a camera club is up at sunrise, always with 
his camera, hoping to catch a near broadside at 
a whale or take the porpoises in the act of 
scratching their backs on the Minnehaha's bows 
— like hogs on a rail fence in the country. His 
failures do not shake his confident hopes of 
success on the return voyage, and recording the 
triumph of the year in his club. 

The first days at sea are full of speculation 
and day dreams to which the gentle rocking of 
the steamer is conducive. They are curious 
composites of home fancies, toil and care, out 
from which you start of a sudden in surprise at 
the far-stretching waves, only to sink back with 
fresh comfort and the relaxation of a warm 
sun bath. Amid this novelty of nothing to do 
landsmen whoi have escaped the routine and 
burden of life ashore, pay little heed to the throng 



NOTHING TO DO 25 

of passengers. The Captain's chart is the official 
guide, and one acquires an impHcit trust in the 
officer who can pick his way under the stars and 
sun with no other direction. No letters or tele- 
grams can reach the voyager. Dates fail to inter- 
est and are disregarded. Even days of the week 
become confused amid the never ceasing wash of 
these waves whose rich, cobalt hues, deeper 
than the blue of skies above, have a 
restful fascination. Athwart our pathway the 
billows swell up suddenly from the deep as 
if another Aphrodite would issue forth upon 
them. Then they fall away in a cabalistic tracery, 
to creep and cling an azure gelatine in fantastic 
shapes — curling from violet ringlets to sprays 
of delicate greens, such as tint the early lawns in 
April. 

The eye wanders over the broad expanse with 
expectation and mystery in every incident. A 
fly speck may prove a sail and bring all on deck 
to speculate and wonder. One remembers long 
voyages and feels a higher respect for the Norse 
Sea-kings and the Pilgrim Fathers. Then human 



26 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

interest returns, and fellow-voyagers, flushed 
with the sun and sea, show kinship and personal 
characteristics. Strange rumors arise in the 
cabin on the simplest topics, pure products of 
unconscious cerebration, says our Southern Pro- 
fessor. Several bridal couples who are wholly 
self-centered during most of the trip, afford more 
material interest. One of the bridegrooms, a 
young Englishman, is carrying a pretty American 
bride to his paternal home in London, near Hyde 
Park. She is a willing prisoner, for it is their 
wedding trip; the home reception is to be an 
international family affair in which English and 
American colors are to blend, and decorate. He 
is a philological study for the "Professor," who 
having been born at a distance from the "Bow- 
bells," cannot satisfactorily account for those 
peculiar inflections on the "ai," when our English 
fellow passenger insists that the steamer "syles" 
beautifully, and that the voyage is a complete 
"bryne" rest. 

The bridegroom's mother and a younger sister 
who attended the wedding, are returning with 



AN ENGLISH BRIDESMAID ^ 27 

him ; the sister, a pleasing young girl with Dolly 
Varden pink and white cheeks and naive English 
manners, is a source of constant interest to the 
ladies. Six weeks of social life in an American 
city were a revelation to her London ideas. 
American boys, always burdened with Huyler's 
candy and other sweets, were an unfailing wonder 
and admiration to her, as doubtless her pink 
cheeks were to them, from which they christened 
her "peaches and cream." She carries back to 
her London home new, agreeable, and graphic 
impressions of Yankee life that will, I imagine, 
incline her to revisit her sister's home, and, 
perhaps, to take out naturalization papers. 

Our first encounter in mid-ocean after we had 
been several days without sight of any craft, was 
one of the important events of the trip. A bell 
from the look out on the foremast gave notice 
of some object ahead, — a little time elapsed be- 
fore it was visible on deck. The object proved to 
be a steamer with the black smoke issuing at 
intervals from a single funnel, and, on nearer 
view as she approached us, her movements were 



28 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

seen to be so wavering as to excite much 
wonder and comment. It seemed quite natural 
to ask if she were in distress or need, but the 
Captain after a short inspection dropped his 
glasses and turned away. 

"Will you not speak to her?" appealed one 
sympathetic young woman. 

''You would not speak unnecessarily to a 
beggar whom you pass on the street," he replied 
pleasantly. 

"Is she a beggar, Captain? Can you tell?" 
exclaimed the passenger eagerly as a group 
gathered about them. 

"She is only an Ocean Tramp," he replied; 
which seemed to settle the issue, as ocean caste 
is strong, and the Tramp passed on behind us, 
and presently out of vision. 

On the seventh day out sea gulls reappeared 
in the steamer's wake, though the Captain said 
that land was still a thousand miles away ; but 
the cattle became uneasy in their stalls next 
morning, lowing like distant fog horns, and the 
copper-faced mariner who was ever trotting side- 



THE CATTLE SCENT LAND 29 

ways — a kind of marine or crab-like fashion — 
to and from the Captain's Bridge, observed 
that it was the custom of cattle to bellow when 
they scented land, "which they knew afor' the 
Captain or anyone else." One bright, clear 
morning the bugler announced land with a 
flourish of trumpet that brought everyone to his 
feet — the first land, the Scilly Islands. Then he 
played the "Star-Spangled Banner," whose famil- 
iar strains, floating out upon the British waters, 
prompted hearty cheers; and all who could sing 
shouted "God save the Queen" or "America," 
without regard for words, as we entered the 
English Channel. 

Looming up presently, dark and formidable 
in the distance, appeared a steamer, growing 
in bulk each moment as she bore down upon us 
belching turgid thunder cloud in tumbling 
masses, white where the sun struck them, but 
black and trailing far astern, a besom of destruc- 
tion — a great English cruiser or battleship — the 
"Terrible" or some other name equally appro- 
priate. At close quarters she turned away after 



30 . TEN DAYS ABROAD 

a glance, satisfied with our inoffensive appearance, 
to continue her silent patrol like some lone and 
giant Titan guarding this open water-gate of 
British commerce even in time of peace. 

On our left directly, within easy gunshot lay 
the coast of England — Devon, where Drake and 
Raleigh manned their fleets; back of it the hills 
were green about the home of Lorna Doone and 
John Ridd. We rounded the Isle of Wight, and 
beyond a distant glimpse of France appeared, 
low on the horizon. Every new prospect had 
its story — stories which have marked the course 
of the world's modern history; and these same 
fitful, chopping seas, that may have paled the 
cheek of the "mighty" Julius, or turned the 
stomach of William the Norman, still exact liberal 
tribute of the traveler. 

Those of our English fellow travelers who had 
been hitherto undemonstrative, now gathered in 
a group on deck, shouting and reciting the ballad 
of "The White Ship" with boyish glee at sight 
of the white chalk cliffs tipped with the laurel 
green of centuries. Their Yankee cousins looked 



UP THE THAMES 31 

on quietly, not oblivious of kinship, and not 
unconscious of a fellow pride in this patriotic 
fervor. Off Goodwin Sands, which a thou- 
sand years ago was an island in the Channel, 
and where the skeletons of many ships are 
gathered each year, we passed the light ship styled 
significantly "The Black Death." Then we 
entered between the low-lying shores of the 
Thames. The shipping increased, and houses 
were more numerous as we advanced up the 
stream toward London, and the marshy banks 
became more slimy where Daniel Quilp's ugly 
figure left by the tide, found a resting place. 

Two hours' sail up the Thames brought us 
to Tilbury, where the ship's docks are located, 
still a score of miles below London. It was at 
Tilbury that Queen Elizabeth appeared in helmet 
and corselet at the head of the English army 
which gathered to meet the Armada; when 
she declared in blunt fashion that she had 
*'the stomach as well as the heart of a king, and 
would fight like one too — " Tilbury heard 
the boom of the last hostile cannon, discharged 



32 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

on Britain's shores, two centuries ago, when the 
Dutchman Van Tromp, with a broom at his 
masthead, sailed up the Thames, and swept the 
British seas. 

Perhaps there is still a something in the 
atmosphere of Good Queen Bess, that infected 
the stomach, or the nature of our steamer. 
Special preparation had been made for the 
reception of the Minnehaha in honor of her 
dimensions, the great cargo she brought and her 
maiden trip. Up to this she had conducted 
herself in a most becoming and shiplike manner. 
Now for the first time she displayed that feminine 
caprice and perversity to which it appears the sex 
with all its admirable qualities, irrespective of 
race or station, is liable on occasions. For an 
interval she resisted every persuasion to draw her 
into dock; setting back doggedly and turning 
up the black Thames mud with her bottom like 
an enormous ploughshare; snapping cables and 
baffling the combined efforts of a flotilla of 
tugs and a swarm of longshoremen. Then 
of her own accord she came forward, broke all 



IN A TANTRUM Z2> 

restraint, and picked up from the rails as though 
she mistook them for hairpins, the great, striding 
steel cranes, which she bent and crumpled 
willfully, dropping them with crash and havoc 
into the warehouse sheds to spread panic among 
the longshoremen. 

At last, her tantrum over, we were safely 
docked, and once more on solid earth. The 
father of our English bridegroom, a sturdy 
Englishman, was waiting to greet his wedding 
party with a delegation of London friends, our 
first glimpse of Londoners on their native heath. 
They were in holiday attire ; some of them carried 
thick sticks, large bouquets on their breasts, with 
other larger bouquets in their hands for the 
English bridesmaid and the American bride. 

Our luggage was soon lifted ashore. Last 
farewells were exchanged between fellow trav- 
elers. We were packed into compartment cars, 
and as the train drew out many regretful adieus 
were still waving toward the dock where the 
Minnehaha would lie until her cargo had been 
disgorged — her maiden voyage done, and her 



34 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

swelling outlines rested peacefully now, on the 
murky bosom of the Thames, like the form of 
some sea-cow giantess, enthralled by the genii 
of commerce to delve and carry. Over trim 
country roads our train scurried away, through 
suburban blocks and rows of precise, two-story 
brick dwellings decorated with jaunty chimney 
pots, into the heart of London town at Fenchurch 
Street Station. 



Ill 



IN LONDON TOWN 



JLM 1 Y window in Morley's Hotel looked out 
*^^J on Trafalg'ar Square, where the 



statue of Nelson towers high over 
London house-tops. The tall granite 
shaft and the statue on its summit are grim with 
smoke and fog stains, but London has no twenty- 
story sky-scrapers to dwarf its monuments and 
throw them into shadow. There is not a patch of 
green or a tree in the Square which is dedicated 
wholly to war and triumphs. Two fountains 
play amid the group of heroic figures the latest 
of which is that of General Gordon, and space yet 



36 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

remains for another, perhaps of "Little Bobs" 
or of Kitchener, when he has completed the 
duty expected of him, restored peace to the 
empire, and won dukedoms and monuments. Most 
impressive of all to me with new significance 
and art at every view, were those four mighty 
Landseer's lions in bronze at the base of the 
Nelson shaft, reposing as in life, with force and 
majesty, symbolic of British power. 

A reminder of green pastures that once were 
here comes with the bells from St. Martin's-in- 
the-Fields a block away, rousing me early. 
Pretty Nell Gwynne is buried there — and Jack 
Sheppard, too, I was told — though St. Martin's 
has not been in the fields since the days of Ad- 
dison and Dean Swift; but once every week for 
two hundred years, as the city grew up around 
it, through some lingering legacy or devotion, 
St. Martin's bells were tolled and still are tolled 
for Nell Gwynne. 

A clatter of feet and the "baa" of sheep further 
suggest the fields as a flock of Southdown mut- 
ton is crowded past to the shambles. Later come 



LONDON STREET TRAFFIC 37 

the creaking of trucks and the tramp of the mas- 
sive Normandy horses. Then the rattle of stages 
and cabs, the cries of the drivers, and one of the 
great streams of London traffic pours forth into 
the Strand. That continuous roll of vehicles on 
the principal streets from morning until midnight 
is one of the London sights. All color combina- 
tions are exhausted to distinguish the different 
stage lines. I wonder if the man lives who knows 
all these lines. The head of old Shillaber who 
introduced stages, would be dazed if he could 
see his progeny to-day; such deliberate streams 
with up and down currents, hansoms and every 
kind of go-cart — rarely getting into a tangle or 
running over the bewildered pedestrian, but keep- 
ing up, hour after hour, the same stead}^ jog-trot. 
One wonders what New York Avould do with 
its enormous elevated and surface traffic turned 
into 'busses and cabs to jam the streets from the 
Battery to Harlem, and bring business to a stand- 
still. They have underground steam and electric 
roads, and the last with American cars and en- 
gines is making London talk of rapid transit and 



38 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

open its eyes. I should think it must come soon. 
Perhaps these are the beginning, and a pity, too, 
that is to sweep away the picturesque procession 
of stages into the Umbo of old stage coaches. But 
all the rattle of London traffic does not strain the 
nerves like the screech of Elevated car wheels or 
the clang of a trolley gong. 

Trafalgar Square shares with Charing Cross 
of which it has come to be a part, distinction 
as one of London's great centers. Somewhere 
Kipling has named Charing Cross with Suez 
Canal as one of the great gateways of the modern 
world, — if you wait long enough, he whom you 
are waiting for is sure to come in the passing 
human throng from all corners of the earth. The 
volume is not greater, if so large, as that at 
Brooklyn Bridge night and day; and the Nar- 
rows at the New York Bay is another even 
greater world's gateway; but its memories in 
which all the others are young, have made the 
modern world, and Charing Cross. These spring 
up before you as if in life, at every turn on Lon- 
don street corners, to picture the past. The Cross 



IN MEMORY OF A QUEEN 43 

keeps alive the memory of that Queen Eleanor, 
the mother of Plantagenets and the wife of the 
first Edward of England whose death was the 
first great national sorrow for an English queen. 
Eleanor's crosses where her body rested in the 
funeral march are still maintained after 600 
years ; that in front of the Charing Cross Rail- 
way Station being the most elaborate of them 
all. 

No panorama, I know, is like that scene on a 
'bus from Charing Cross or Westminster Abbey 
to St. Paul's. The whole world of English fact 
and story has mingled with the crowds upon 
these streets, since mad Piers Ploughman stalked 
in russet Lollard garb, and wailed his sounds 
of mournful antiphon along the unfriendly 
Strand. Chaucer was clerk for the crown near 
Charing Cross from which pilgrims still start for 
Canterbury. Ben Jonson was born there, and 
lived near at hand as secretary of Lord Bacon. All 
London, old and new, must have lived about it 
sometime. Just around on the Strand Mr. Pick- 
wick and the Club started forth a-stage top on 



44 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

a memorable journey, and encountered Mr. 
Alfred Jingle with his lively anecdote of the de- 
capitated head of the family, and the sandwich. 
It needs no vivid fancy to get glimpses of old 
Pepys yet; to see Dr. Johnson's burly figure 
pushing through the throng, or Colonel New- 
come erect and martial, coming from the Gray 
Friars. London clings to all fashions of dress 
— old and new — it does not put on straw hats 
as one man in June to strike them off in Sep- 
tember. 

But even London has its changes, and so many 
since Mr. Pickwick's time that Dickens himself, 
Walter Besant says, would scarcely know it 
now. The 'busman, if anyone, knows it to-day. 

"Osk me wot ye likes," he responded, taking 
my sixpence, while he deftly held the reins with 
two fingers of one hand, and so dexterously 
extracted a cigarette from his pockets with the 
other, and lighted it, his hat tipped back, and his 
eye twinkling beside the large ruddy nose, that 
I was tempted to ''osk" if he were of any kin 
to the famous Weller family, spelled with a V. 



DIRTY DICK'S 45 

'"Ave'e been to Dirty Dick's, Uncle John?" 
he continued. 

I did not know of that celebrity who, he ex- 
plained, had "kep" a London public 'ouse a 
hundred years or so ago, and who had a romance 
of his own. On his wedding day his bride died, 
after which Dirty Dick never washed or shaved 
" 'isself," but locked up the room where 
the wedding feast was prepared, and it was 
eaten by the rats. Then, in a fit of remorse, 
he captured all the rats and cats and dogs he 
could lay hold of ever afterward, nailing them 
up on the walls of his "public 'ouse," where they 
still remain, though Dirty Dick is long dead and 
was himself put away in a coffin. 

At the end of his route, near Whitechapel, my 
'busman turned out and guided me to Dirty 
Dick's, which stands on a corner near Bishops- 
gate, one of those "gin palaces" whose proprietor 
with an eye to business, has made the most of 
his gruesome and posthumous advertisement. 
■ The walls within were high, like a chapel, and 
dark; there were flaring lights, and in the reces- 



46 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

ses among the liquor casks, hung the dried mum- 
mies of dogs and cats by the score, nailed up like 
smoked herring and decorated with long festoons 
of cobweb. The crowd in the place was no less 
remarkable, filling it to the doorway, as in most 
London "gin palaces," with men, women, babies, 
children in arms — all drinking. 

Whitechapel itself was a fairly respectable 
thoroughfare. The narrow street and low stone 
dwellings were clean — there were no tall tene- 
ments or ''double deckers," but one felt the 
absence of those broad and sightly public 
school structures which in New York and 
other American cities vary and brighten the street 
outlines, and help to leaven the multitudes from 
foreign lands. The population seemed thrifty 
and tidy; little shop windows gave a glimpse of 
its needs, and the illustrated Police Budget and 
popular ballads some idea of its mental aspir- 
ations, which have a love of the horrible that 
comes down from the Tower and Richard III. 
The Boer war divides the interest now. On this 
topic there was some remarkable literature, and 



THE WHITECHAPEL DISTRICT 47 

in every window the "Absent Minded Beggar" 
seemed the favorite poem here if it is not 
so in higher London circles. 

There were no idlers lolling over the sidewalks 
in Whitechapel, such as may be seen any day 
in Mott Street, or in any of the several foreign 
quarters of New York. The London poor live 
on much less than the poor in American cities, 
and that less seems to be much harder to get in 
any occupation. So it is carefully watched by 
workingmen's unions, and a man who is laid off 
for sickness takes his turn in getting back where 
he can earn his few shillings again. One can 
plainly see that there would be no chance here 
for an Emigration Bureau. Even the Italian, 
who adapts himself to every vocation, and thrives 
in competition with the Jew, would starve before 
a foothold was secured. Only among the 
women in the last stages of Nancy Sykes, but 
still young, did I see on the streets in this district 
many evidences of bruises and dissipation, the 
last sad evidence before the work'us or the river. 

"Them's the 'Arriets," says my 'busman to an 



48 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

inquiry. "Hever see the 'Arriets on a bloomin' 
bum full o' ginger gin, Uncle Jimmy? Ven they 
twists up their back 'air, an' stretches their 'ands 
luvin' like across the street, an' marches down 
a-shoutin' an' singin' like a hull Salwation band — 

'Karry the news to Lun'on town ! 
Hoi, karry the news to MoU-ee !' 

The Bobby, 'e shuts 'is hye, 'e do, ven 'e sees 'em 
comin', an' 'e 'as bissness suddint, wot tykes 
him raound the corner." 




IV 



OLD LONDON MEMORIES 

JEVERAL public school buildings were 
pointed out to me in London, but their 
exteriors were like brick warehouses, 
hard, plain and uninviting. Much 
of the early public school methods adopted 
in New York and other American cities was 
on the English plan, and many of its simpler 
features still remain with us, but we have de- 
veloped the first suggestions. London has its 
Central School Board, and its local school 
trustees, who are tenacious of their rights. It 
annually expends nearly three millions sterling 

D 



50 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

on its public school system, but the general public 
does not take the same active part or interest 
in school management, as with us. 

There are schools like those of Eton and 
Westminster which have existed for centuries, 
but for the few, and which have been the fore- 
runners of the modern public school. That of 
the Blue Coat Boys, with its curious customs and 
traditions, goes back almost to Thomas a Becket. 
It is a great pile of gray stone with an inner 
open court quadrangle, surrounded by long 
corridors whose pavements are worn in ruts by 
the school boys of more than four centuries ; 
and, whose ancient vaulted arches, lead to the 
quaint, old buildings. 

About 800 boys wear the Blue Coat colors — 
Richardson, the author of Clarissa, was one 
of them, so also were Coleridge, Charles Lamb 
and Leigh Hunt. Once a year, during Lent, the 
boys have a public dinner in the great hall, with 
the Lord Mayor, the Prince of Wales, sometimes, 
and other distinguished visitors looking on. The 
meal over, the boys take up their plates, napkins 



THE BLUE COAT BOYS 51 

and candlesticks, filing out in procession, two 
abreast, with profound bows, as they pass before 
the Lord Mayor. I do not know if this is really 
so solemn an affair as it appears, and the re- 
straints and respect for years and authority has 
its better side, certainly, and a lasting influence; 
but I can hardly think of it so ceremonious or 
impressive at home where even the public school 
has its college cries. 

Only a few steps from the Blue Coats 
is another great pile of gray stone. Its little 
doors and barred windows issue on the street 
through the thick walls of Newgate, where the 
Jack Sheppards and Dick Turpins met their fate. 
Within them Barnaby Rudge and Maypole 
Hugh were confined, when the Gordon mobs 
raged outside. I was glad of the chance to see 
both these old institutions, for Newgate and the 
Blue Coats too, are soon to go — to be moved to 
the suburbs, making way for modern innovations. 
In New York changes come so soon that the 
moss of centuries green with human memories 
has little chance to form; but, big as it is, 



52 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

every thing important enough to attract notice 
seems to leave a long impress in London. Crystal 
Palace still lingers and there is yet a Christy 
Hall where George Christy's negro minstrels, 
one of the earliest entertainments of this kind, 
was a prolonged success back in the sixties. In 
New York where they were scarcely less popular, 
all trace and even memory of them are gone. 

Belgravia, Holland Park, each London district 
has its own associations, but it is in the City 
that they cluster at every corner, with the 
accumulated layers of many centuries. Cheapside 
and the Strand are the early ''Boweries" going 
far back to the first trades and guilds. The 
Monument of the Great Fire and the Plague 
shoots up from a narrow, antiquated side street. 
St. Paul's great dome swelling into view at every 
street crossing is a pantheon recording the 
eminent crowd of names and deeds upon its walls, 
and a landmark against the sky like a vast air 
ship, 'for all within sound of its bells — ^though 
from London Bridge, through the fog and smoke, 
it is still difficult to fix a site for the New 



ST. CLEMENT'S IN MOURNING 53 

Zealander, when he comes, to take his stand. 

St. Bridges, St. Giles', St. Swithin's, and St. 
Clement Danes are all within this ancient circle. 
Dr. Johnson attended St. Clement's when he 
resolved sturdily to go to church each Sunday, 
and "purify his soul, by communion with the 
Highest," and his voice was heard in the 
responses above all others within its walls. St. 
Clement's gets its name from the Danes, who 
remained here in King Alfred's time. Its bell 
still rings at midnight as when Justice Shallow 
and Sir John Falstaff heard it, though rusty and 
throaty now as Sir John's voice became, when he 
began to babble of green fields, as his legs grew 
cold. 

St. Clement's was in part mourning the after- 
noon when I saw it first, for the loss of a favorite 
Tom cat. Placards written in a trembling hand 
on note paper with a black border, and fastened 
to the iron pickets, announced the "Tom cat" as 
strayed or stolen, and proffered a reward of five 
shillings "without questions" for his return! 
Here in these old walls amid the cloistered past, 



54 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

where the traffic of the Strand rolls around with 
its dull roar was a great grief — a fear, perhaps, 
that its favorite Tom cat had been taken and im- 
paled in that pantheon of ''Dirty Dick's," not far 
away. A clerical with cap and gown, and blonde 
whiskers, looking anxiously out from a little 
doorway beside a buttress, seemed chief mourner. 
I wondered if he were a dean, a vicar, or a canon. 
The Tower of London with all its tragedies, 
with its crown jewels, and sombre relics, and its 
massive and time-eaten walls as old as Christen- 
dom, had to me a modest, retiring aspect, in the 
midst of the modern Babel; — like some rugged 
old house dog which, having served its time, John 
Bull has placed in the background. There are 
pretty green spots within these spacious walls. 
The volunteers in full uniform assemble on them 
for inspection before going to or returning from 
camp at Aldershot. Half-a-dozen big ravens, 
wise enough in looks to pull out corks with 
Barnaby's, stalk about these grounds as sentries, 
and on the broad plaza outside the gates, the 
crowd of men, women and vehicles that wait for 



TOMMY ATKINS AT THE TOWER 55 

Tommy Atkins to appear in regimentals, makes 
one think of Bastile mobs, only this is a friendly 
crowd, if motley. 

Tommy Atkins is the bright bit of color on 
every street in these patriotic days pending the 
the South African war. But he is in dead 
earnest. See him in his red coat, chest inflated, 
shoulders squared — his two-foot stick in hand, 
his little red cap balanced on one ear, and he is 
the prettiest piece of comedy off the stage. You 
make way for him as *'one of the finest," whether 
he stands six feet in his stockings or barely five. 
The telegraph boy fits his dress, and steps like 
Tommy Atkins ; and when he appears in full 
parade, in regimentals, with fife and drum, not 
only the small boy, but men and women march 
on ahead, in the mid-street, as an escort. This is 
the same war- fever that we had a year or two ago, 
after Dewey's guns were heard at Manila. 

But the great English pantheon, Westminster, 
one cannot grasp in a passing glance, with the 
broad sweep of Westminster Bridge leading to it, 
the storied walls of Parliament to guard it, and 



56 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

"Big Ben" from his tower to sound the hour, and 
"all's well," night and day. Longfellow's 
countrymen had laid a fresh wreath of flowers on 
his bust one morning when I was there. The 
American poet looks out upon the company of 
Shakespeare, Milton, Thackeray, and Macaulay; 
and beyond into the dim crypts where flooded in 
the mellow glow of pictured windows, lie the 
marble efligies of kings, queens and Warwicks. 
Just within the main entrance of the Abbey is a 
marble slab over Gladstone's last resting place, 
and a few feet away are the figures of Robert 
Peel and Disraeli, whose names are more in men's 
mouths now than that of the "grand old man," of 
ten short years ago. Close by is a fine memorial to 
Admiral Sir Peter Warren, who died before our 
Revolution, but whose memory has a home inter- 
est, as his estate was the Van Nest place in the 
Ninth Ward of New York. 

One cannot avoid recognition that American 
cities are built on more modern lines and with 
larger grasp than the greatest of these old world 
towns. The newer cities have a freer hand, and 



THE FAME OF LONDON BRIDGE 57 

build as large as Nature. New York among the 
oldest of these New World centers, with old 
London names and street lines in its older 
sections, is a modern city. Its buildings, its 
bridges, are on the vaster scale of the rivers 
around it; beside them the Thames and London 
Bridge are of Lilliputian proportions. But I 
wonder if the many millions whom these greater 
bridges shall serve, will carry down their repute 
for centuries, as the fame of London Bridge has 
been for good and ill, until it has a place in the 
folk-lore of the English home and nation, which 
the children sing upon the street, with a note of 
apprehension and perhaps of deeper significance : 

"Loridon Bridge is falling down ; falling down ! 
And so falls my lady!" 

On the last night in London I sailed up the 
Thames from London Bridge to Westminster — 
not the murky, misty Thames of Rogue Rider- 
hood, but a clear, bright and beautiful river in 
the moonlight which edged with silver the fine 
outlines of the Parliament buildings. Gently 



58 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

through the air in mellow strains, as from golden 
memories flashed upon the night, flowed the 
"Normandy Chimes" from an Embankment con- 
cert. These banks have rung with mirth and 
gaiety from Marlowe, Greene and Shakespeare, 
that merrymaking company, down the gamut of 
English song. Queen Bess' barge sailed here 
with music, and her courtiers — and over in St. 
Margaret's near the Abbey lies the headless 
corse of one of them, that Sir Walter who soiled 
his cloak for Elizabeth ; above him a memorial 
is inscribed by an American Minister and poet, 
from the Virginia which he founded. England 
has learned many lessons since then from her 
triumphs and defeats, and has more than once 
reversed her verdicts. 

Marochetti's equestrian statue of Richard Coeur 
de Lion, in front of the House of Lords, is not in 
favor with art critics now. Richard himself has 
fallen from grace ; but to me, by light of the moon, 
the heroic horseman is a goodly sight, full of 
action, a personification of the Richard of Ivan- 
hoe, the Sluggard Knight whose teeth made grist 




OLIVER CROMWELL 

W. Hamo Thorny ci' oft, R.A. 



OLIVER CROMWELL'S PLACE 59 

of Friar Tuck's dried peas ; and something more 
— a strain of that insane, medieval heroism 
of the Plantagenets, the Angevin Fulkes. He 
was among the first of England's great soldiers, 
the savage in him little tamed to harness. The 
fervid English mood has subsided in that other 
stern figure of three hundred years later, though 
a fanatic glow still burns beneath the surface. 
England's great soldier in plain fact and 
accomplishment, whose body was exhumed 
and reviled, its grinning skull impaled on 
this same spot beside the ancient hall of 
William Rufus, now, once again has been 
remembered and honored. Thornycroft's Oliver 
Cromwell stands facing Westminster, his back 
turned upon Parliament, firm, strong and confi- 
dent, but not an unkindly figure ; bareheaded — his 
sword drawn, with the point resting on the 
ground beside the large, broad feet — every inch a 
commoner, and the Protector, as he looks up 
towards Whitehall. 

And at Trafalgar Square, when the moon had 
climbed higher, the figure of Nelson on its high 



6o TEN DAYS ABROAD 

pedestal was bathed in softer light, though the 
unfortunate King Charles, beyond, caught a 
spectral glare. His monument is crumbling to 
decay. With a sad vacillation he gazes on this 
once familiar theatre, as much out of joint in time 
and place as his name was in the crazy memorials 
of ''Mr. Dick." Falling lower, the moon rays tip 
the shaggy manes of the great Landseer lions, 
and rouse them — as if they were about to lift 
their massive heads and roar in a placid humor. 



V 



OVER THE CHANNEL 




N my compartment as the train left Char- 
ing Cross a young French drummer 
with curhng dark mustaches, took 
leave from the open door of a tall and 
blue-eyed, sweet-voiced English girl, who clung 
to him repeating : "Good-bye, Jean !" and making 
him repeat that he would write that night in Paris, 
and every day thereafter. She stood tearfully, 
waving her hand as the train pulled out, as if 
he were starting on a voyage around the world. 
Jean was deeply affected for at least several 
minutes. Then he drew a long breath from his 



62 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

boots upward, smiled as he selected a cigar from 
a pretty souvenir case, twisted his mustaches, 
and presently sought solace in the smoking com- 
partment. 

I doubt much if many of us live to see a 
Channel tunnel, however practicable it may be. 
To the average Londoner the discomforts of the 
ferry like the old lady's rheumatism, have become 
by inheritance a kind of faith without which he 
would be imhappy. Most of the large com- 
mercial houses in France and England have 
branch offices and mutual interests on both sides 
of the Channel, but a trip from London to Paris 
is to the Londoner a great journey, though the 
distance is about the same as from New York 
to Boston, and its perturbations not more serious 
than are often met in rounding Point Judith on 
a Sound steamer. 

To enter Paris at midnight is to fancy oneself 
arriving at the Grand Central Station in New 
York, driving down Fifth avenue and into Broad- 
way when the electric lights are all aglare — with 
the rush of cabs and carriages, the lustre of rich 



THE PARIS BOULEVARDS 



63 



costumes, of fair faces and graceful forms, as 
the crowds surge from the theatres amid the blaze 
of restaurants, odors of banquets and the sparkle 
of jewels and wine. Those beautiful wide boule- 
vards teem all day with life ; after midnight they 
are aflame with a fever-glow and excitement. 

New York has boulevards as light and as 
beautiful, but they are beyond the midnight zone, 
and they are retired with the sun. They have yet 
to become famous or otherwise, 
with the men and deeds of centuries. 
Amidst this rush and brilliant life 
one wonders if there is no other 
side, until he sees now and then 
a quiet Parisian family party on 
the boulevard, or catches a glimpse 
of the home group within its own 
little world — those inner courts 
which are a part of every French 
household. 

In Paris, especially Old Paris, 
where memories cluster on every 
side, the present seems to crowd 







64 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

the past more closely than in London. The 
glory of the Grand Monarch pales before the 
greater Napoleon, and the monuments and arches 
of triumph both of Louis and Napoleon, are over- 
shadowed to-day by the German conquerors. 
Paris rooted up and destroyed the Bastile, while 
London drew the fangs and let the Tower stand. 
Both cities beheaded a king, but except in Mira- 
beau, Paris has no Cromwell to honor. The 
Conciergerie remains as when Marie Antoinette 
looked through its bars and over the Seine to the 
dismal spire of the ''Butcher" St. Jacques, and 
other sombre reminiscences extend to the present 
generation. Along the wall of the cemetery of 
Pere la Chaise the guide pointed to spots where 
the bullets had struck after passing through the 
bodies of the victims, the thousand survivors of 
the last Commune. They had been hunted down 
like rabbits from behind the tombstones of the 
cemetery — those of Abelard and Helois and the 
illustrious multitude ; neither church nor tomb is 
sanctuary now as in mediaeval days — ^to be 
dragged out, ranged in line, and shot. Then the 



THE LAST COMMUNE 



65 



bodies were laid in one great trench at the 
entrance to the cemetery, to fertihze the long 
mound and cover it every year with a rich growth 
of verdure. 

After this it is pleasanter to catch the names of 
the Rue de Richelieu, Victor Hugo at the squares 
and street corners, and to see memorials and 
monuments to Moliere and Gambetta, Corneille, 
Fontaine, Le Sage, and the tomb of Napoleon. 
Notre Dame is not St. Paul ; its archbishops, like 
the Roman emperors, seem all 
to have come to some violent 
end. At street corners you can 
see w^here Jean Valjean may 
have climbed with little Cos- 
sette in his arms over the con- 
vent walls ; and a silhouette of 
a griffin from the square sum- 
mit of the tower, looks 
down with the features of the 
Hunchback of the Notre Dame. In the Place 
Malesherbes out beyond the Madeleine, is the 
fine memorial by Dore of the elder Dumas. 




THE HUNCHBACK OF 
NOTRE DAME 



66 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

The big strong head of the great romancer is 
real, and there is a spirited Hfe-figure of D'Artag- 
nan of the Musketeers. The father of the great 
Alexander, General Dumas, of Napoleon's army, 
and the son, Dumas Ms, the author of Camille, 
are to be united here, it is said, in a group. 

A block away in the Pare Monceau is a snow- 
white marble bust of Guy de Maupassant ; below 
it one of his own creations — the reclining figure 
of a woman in modern costume, a strong, intel- 
ligent face far-away in meditation over an open 
volume that she holds. It is artistic and impress- 
ive, as everything is in Paris, though one wishes 
that her large, pointed shoe did not show so 
conspicuously beneath the dress. 

All Paris parks have beauty and character, but 
the Pare Monceau was especially attractive to me. 
It is no larger, I think, than Washington Square 
Park, in New York. Amid its rolling lawns 
and pretty groves, where marble nymphs and 
fauns seem waiting, like Hawthorne's, to spring 
into being, I saw several stained and broken 
Corinthian columns standing alone, silent records 



PARIS OF THE MUSKETEERS 67 

of some more ancient and distinguished service. 
On the banks of a Httle pond, where the bonnes 
in white caps, and the children were feeding the 
goldfish from their fingers, were other columns 
and the ruined walls and faqade from which they 
came. I learned on inquiry that this had been 
the country home in Paris suburbs 300 years ago 
of the beautiful Gabrielle, where Henry IV., the 
plumed knight of Navarre, and his minister Sully, 
often found seclusion from the state. 

From Paris I should like to have returned by 
way of Rouen and Normandy — and to have had 
a passing sight of Chateau Gaillard, the Lion 
Hearted Richard's gay and rugged Norman 
castle, of which the rock dungeons still remain; 
but one cannot see all, even with abundant time 
at disposal, which I had not. The railroad to 
Calais follows closely the route from the Barrier 
St. Denis taken by the Musketeers when they 
started for London to obtain of Buckingham the 
Queen's diamond studs. ''Three days to 
London," said the Cardinal; ''three days' delay, 
and three to return." Now this journey is done 



68. TEN DAYS ABROAD 

in eight hours. At Chantilly Porthos went down. 
Aramis withdrew wounded at Crevecoeur, and 
D'Artagnan left Athos besieged in a cellar at 
Amiens. The train whirls through this rolling 
country, dotted with its quaint old chateaux, and 
cut up in little farms, where the French farmer 
and his wife, with their white horses and oxen, 
toil patiently on Sundays ; or fish and push their 
skiffs in streams that wind through famous fields 
in which the early strifes of French and English 
were fought to a finish. 

Battles were then so different; bigger spec- 
tacles than they are to-day with our long range 
guns and smokeless powder — football games on 
grander scale, with grander savagery, and the 
Wagnerian accompaniment of a modern foundry ; 
dust, clatter and turmoil, when in the crash of 
conflict, as Lord Derby's "Homer" has it : 

"Thundering he fell, 
And loud the burnished armor rung." 

The country seems too modest and unpretentious 
to record such epics as Crecy, Poitiers and the 



THE DOVER CLIFFS 69 

Black Prince; Agincourt and Henry V., or the 
Field of the Cloth of Gold with Henry VHL and 
Francis. There are still old fortifications at 
St. Valery, where William the Conqueror crossed 
the water. Boulogne, where Napoleon massed 
his army to repeat the experiment and failed, is 
now a chief port of the Channel — and some 
Frenchmen still anticipate another Hastings, or a 
battle of Dorking. 

Over the Channel that bright and peaceful 
Sunday afternoon, when we crossed to Dover, 
every little green about the English towns was 
thronged with church and picnic parties — and 
many of them had Punch and Judy or waxwork 
shows. The white Dover cliffs are equipped with 
the latest English fortifications, and the guns are 
trained upon the distant line of France, low on 
the horizon. Among them is "Queen Elizabeth's 
Pocket Pistol," on which the lines are written : 

''Train me well and keep me clean, 
And I'll carry a ball to Calais green." 

This is a long range for a gun even to-day. The 



70 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

ancient cannon, a brass piece 20 feet in length, 
was given to Henry VIII., Elizabeth's father; 
why named for Elizabeth is not stated, perhaps 
in recognition of certain explosive qualities that 
she had, like Aunt Betsy Trotwood who once 
warred with the donkeys on the green of these 
same Dover cliffs. 

One of these cliffs is still called Shakespeare's 
Cliff in recognition, I believe, of those vivid 
pictures from King Lear, many of which are 
placed about Dover. In fancy one can see the 
old demented King, gray hair and beard flying 
in the night, standing here above the raging sea, 
and shouting to the howling winds. Here, too, 
are the confines of Kent, where that other mad- 
man. Jack Cade, was first to rant in English 
speech of personal liberty and freedom — and 
where, perhaps, the fierce north winds carried 
the contagious sounds across the Channel to 
France and to Paris. 

But Paris, it is said, is no longer France, in 
the old sense. With the Republic a large, strong 
and independent public opinion has grown up in 



''AU RESERVOIR, MONSHEERr 



71 




the country, and I suspect 
that if mutual interests can 
prevail much of the bad 
blood between the countries 
will be spent at long range. 
There is proof of this in a 
somewhat ancient stor}^ that 
was told me, in a new form, 
of an Englishman and 
Frenchman who had at- 
tended the Exposition to- 
gether, learned each other's language and estab- 
lished cordial relations. At final parting the 
Englishman exclaims : 

''Au reservoir, monsheer!" 

And the Frenchman cordially responds, 
"Tanks !" 



" TANKS 1" 



4J 




VI 



SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 

|OME of the most charming EngHsh 
country Hes in Kent, south-east of 
London, between it and Dover. The 
hill-side pastures are dotted with 
sheep, whose fleeces look like snow-spots on the 
green, and the rooks stalking over the harvest 
fields alight often on the backs of the sheep — an 
ink-blot on a stack of parchment — with the fam- 
iliarity of landed proprietors. When Chaucer's 
pilgrims thronged the roads to Canterbury shrine 
this South country was the thriving center 
of English industry. It is even said that 



WHERE MICAWBER FLOURISHED yz 

as the cliffs subside on the Channel coast, Canter- 
bury may at some distant day become a seaport, 
and resume its former prestige — Canterbury, 
where the dust of the Black Prince rests, 
and where Micawber once flourished. There 
are Saxon names on all sides through Kent, 
and the isolated Hop-towers among every group 
of buildings seem the vestiges of Norman castles ; 
but the towns slumber as soundly as Rip Van 
Winkle, and where once was open country large 
forests have grown up. 

From the train you see smooth and pretty 
country lanes running between hedges and 
ditches, and catch occasional glimpses of a coach 
and four, tourists crowded on the top, winding 
the horn and waving hats and handkerchiefs — 
a delightful way of touring the country. Fair 
Rosamond's Bower, and the manor-house of Anne 
Boleyn were here, but king's favors have now 
become plain farm houses. Sackville-West, the 
English Minister to Washington, remembered 
by Americans, has the handsomest country seat 
in this neighborhood. Nearer London, Chelsfield 



74 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

was for years the home where Darwin worked 
out the evolution of the human race ; and nearer 
yet, where a prett}^, wooded hill site recalls West- 
chester hill and dales, is Chiselhurst, the retreat 
of Napoleon III. and Eugenie, after Sedan. 

Beyond and to the north of London in the heart 
of England, the landscape softened with green 
fields, has all the charm and beauty of repose. 
One cannot breathe too deep the calm restfulness 
of the air ; and the passing glimpse is all too brief 
of the smooth country roads, and gentle running 
rivers like the Avon, on whose low banks Izaak 
Walton loved to angle when it rained "May 
butter." Here are pleasant abodes, more quiet 
even than the Bronx, without the picturesque, 
scenic wonderlands that in our valleys of the 
Connecticut or Delaware, delight, while they in- 
toxicate the eye, and strain the sinews. And the 
country life seems to partake of this easy-flowing 
nature. At Leamington station, where I changed 
for Warwick, the car we were to take was 
leisurely drawn into the station by a stout Norman 
horse instead of a switch engine. The most con- 



A PASTORAL COUNTRY 75 

spicuous object on the platform was a broad and 
fat Southdown sheep patiently waiting to be con- 
verted into roasts and mutton chops, and receiving 
meanwhile with quiet content the attentions of 
passing tourists. 

A strain of this pastoral repose from his native 
heath, enters I fancy, the varied temperament of 
Shakespeare, most apparent in his last years. I 
could not reconcile with these surroundings the 
theories of landscape environment which attribute 
to this influence in the early homes of great poets 
and artists, the storm and stress and grandeur 
which mark their creations. Doubtless Shakes- 
peare caught the idyllic beauty of the country on 
the Avon, but the turmoil and tragedy of his plays 
must have come from human associations, assim- 
ilated and embodied by his fruitful imagination 
from the traditions which ladened the atmosphere 
and the pageants and folk-lore of Warwick and 
Kenilworth. 

Stratford is a pretty, Elizabethan country- 
village, renovated and restored on modern lines 
with sanitary purpose, and v/ith stage effect, I 



76 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

suspect, for it was hardly so clean a town three 
hundred years ago. None the less, these quaint, 
old houses, with plaster sides and ends of timber 
beams protruding, and straw-thatched roofs — 
many of them looking very tired and leaning over 
with the weight of centuries — transport one to 
the days and scenes which made them famous. 
It was not many years ago that Stratford streets 
were less inviting; when the Shakespeare house 
had Court, the butcher, for a tenant. Being too 
modest to use his own name, he put out a sign 
for his butcher shop that read : **This is the 
house where the Immortal Shakespeare was 
born," at which the "immortal" creator of Nym 
and Bardolph, whose father was also a butcher, 
may have turned in the church near by and smiled. 
It was a comfortable, well-to-do-house in its 
day, with a dozen good-sized rooms, paved with 
stone on the ground floor, and carpeted then with 
rugs or rushes. In the kitchen and living room 
there is a large fire-place where one could keep 
warm of a cold day, if he were out of the drafts 
and had his back to the settle. The house was 



THE SHAKESPEARE COTTAGE 77 

then detached and had ample garden space. Now 
it is a museum of Shakespeare reHcs, maintained 
by the town. So also is the Ann Hathaway 
cottage at Shottery, a few minutes' walk, which 
is under the care of Hathaway descendants, 
pleasant, bright-faced Stratford women; but 
Shakespeare's kin are scattered and lost. 

The walls and low ceilings of the Shakespeare 
cottage are covered with the autographs of visit- 
ors to his shrine. Among them are the names of 
Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Dickens, and Carlyle 
— there is no more room, and no name can be 
written there now. A small fee is charged, which, 
from the 30,000 annual visitors sustains the cost 
of attendants and keeps the house in repair. These 
visitors, each of whom leaves a few shillings in 
the country round, have made a new place of 
Stratford in the last half century, just as the 
summer travel has built up the Catskills and the 
country about New York. There are modern 
houses in the village as well, rows and streets 
of them in pretty contrast with the old town, the 
ancient church where the poet is buried, and the 



78 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

Grammar school he attended. 

In our strenuous Hfe to-day with its self-con- 
sciousness, it is difficult to understand how the 
creator of Hamlet could renounce a career at the 
full period of prime and strength, for the seclusion 
of a country town. Perhaps he was no longer in 
the prime. His physical and mental life for 
twenty-five years had been at high tension. Mar- 
lowe, Greene and many of his contemporaries 
gave way under the strain. He had succeeded 
because of restraining qualities, and Sidney Lee 
has shown that William Shakespeare, gentleman, 
retired with as handsome a competence as many 
successful actors and writers have to-day. That 
repose after the prolonged struggle to success, 
must have been welcome to one who united in 
himself the natures of Jacques and the Duke of 
Bohemia. And is Shakespeare's career and ad- 
vancement from a country lad, school teacher, 
a lackey at the theatre door holding horses, more 
wonderful or improbable than that of Franklin, 
— or that of Lincoln, from a bare-foot flat- 
boatman on the Mississippi? In his last years 



THE POETS RESTING PLACE 79 

the visits to London and the purchase of 
property, there are suggestions of a return to the 
city life. One wonders if his health and faculties 
had been spared for a dozen years or more after 
this rest, whether even he would not have been 
drawn by the fascination of crowds to participate 
again in some measure, with the world's life and 
activities. Yet even Shakespeare is human, and 
may live his time and complete his usefulness. 

In peaceful quiet and simplicity, and amid the 
scenes of his childhood, there is a home-like 
fitness that Shakespeare should rest in the last 
long sleep. He still contributes to the welfare of 
his birthplace. The fine memorial theatre, and an 
admirable monument attest the tenderness with 
which the master spirit of the world's Hterature 
is cherished. And he lies just away from sight 
and hearing of the turmoil and strife in the 
greatest city of the world he has portrayed — still 
adding, after three centuries, to the world's 
renown. Did he not in some measure realize the 
future? Did not Spenser, Marlowe, Ben Jonson 
anticipate it? How much larger is he in the life 



8o TEN DAYS ABROAD 

of to-day — by far a greater figure than rulers, 
statesmen or philosophers who have played their 
brief parts upon the stage. 

Our coach driver to Stratford, a sturdy, honest 
Warwick man — "lad" in the country parlance — 
of more than twenty years, was born and bred in 
sight of the Avon, though never more than 
twenty miles away from it. He had been to 
school and could write and read. His training 
in these rural districts smacked of that "School 
of Virtue" whose maxims in rhyme were, in 
Shakespeare's day part of the public schooling. 
On a shelf at the "Wool Pack" I found some of 
these maxims — whose homely vein of common 
sense is not out of place to-day : 

"If a man demand a question of thee, 
In thine answer-making be not too hasty; 
Else he may judge in thee, little wit. 
To answer to a thing, and not hear it. 
Weigh well his words, the case understand, 
Ere an answer to make thou take in hand ; 
Suffer his whole tale out to be told. 
Then speak thou mayst, and not be controlled, 
With countenance sober, the body upright. 
Thy feet just together, hands in like plight." 



''A CLEVER MAN" 8i 

He had not read the plays, but had caught 
gUmpses of some of them being "hacted" in the 
Stratford theatre. Most of the tourists, he told 
us, were Americans, from which he inferred that 
Americans think more of Shakespeare than the 
English people do. 

" 'E must 'ave been a clever man," the Warwick 
lad observed, inquiringly, "for so many a- folk for 
to keep a-thinkin' of 'im for so long?" 

This same Stratford air that nourished Shakes- 
peare he had breathed and thrived upon, but the 
muse of Avon exhausted her magic before his 
day, and had left him that simple, passive nature 
of the Southdown mutton at the railway station. 
But he knew every rod of ground, every fishpool 
around — every family history, I think, about 
Stratford, no small accomplishment of itself. 
From the road, however, he pointed out a modest 
eminence on the skyline as Edgehill, where a 
great fight had once been, not seeming to know 
that it was the first defeat which Cromwell's 
"Roundheads" gave the Cavaliers. 

As we returned by the Avon road he showed 



4 



82 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

us the Lucy estate, and the red brick hall or 
manor house of Charlecote in a grove of great 
oaks or elms, like those of the forest of Arden. 
There were red deer browsing in the open, 
descendants, it might be, of those for whose 
poaching Sir Thomas Lucy arrested Shakespeare. 
The Lucy estate appears a large and fine property 
and it continues in the family, though the surviv- 
ing member, a daughter, was recently married to 
a Fairfax, of the same family as the Virginia 
Fairfaxes ; but to preserve the family name the 
husband has taken hers, reversing the usual order, 
and is known as Fairfax-Lucy. This name Fair- 
fax, brought Shakespeare nearer to American 
ears, especially as only a few miles away, at 
Sulgrave, is still standing the ancestral house of 
the Washingtons, with the family coat of arms, 
built by a Lawrence Washington, in Shakes- 
peare's time. 

We started a covey of partridge by the roadside 
in the Lucy grounds, and, as it went whirring by, 
a lark leaped up in circling flight with delicate 
trill accompaniment of song. The sun was 



NO AMERICAN CORN 83 

getting low. A pleasant glow, like Indian summer, 
poured from the west through the vistas of those 
great tree trunks whose columns may have been 
silent witnesses of the poaching episode. Two 
small boys whirled in handsprings like windmills, 
keeping up beside our vehicle, and whirled the 
harder when I threw them "tuppence." Our 
Warwick lad continued to discourse on partridge 
shooting — he had a Stratford poaching instinct, 
I think — as we passed into the ancient gateway 
of the old city of Warwick, driving to the "Wool 
Pack," while he changed horses at the "Punch 
Bowl," and we, with keen appetites, ate a hasty 
meal before riding on to Kenilworth. 

"You don't have American corn?" I ventured, 
as the waiter brought in a steaming dish of fresh 
string beans whose savory fragrance reminded 
one of Yankee succotash. 

"Ho, no !" he sniffed loftily. "We hony 'as hit 
for the 'oggs and 'osses." 



VII 



KENILWORTH TRADITIONS 



▼^ ENILWORTH Castle is but five miles 
•^^ I from Warwick and barely ten from 
^ ^^ Stratford. Shakespeare as a boy, it 
is thought, attended those fetes with 
which the Earl of Leicester received Queen 
Elizabeth so graphically told in Walter Scott's 
story. All this country of Shakespeare's boyhood 
haunts teems with historic legend blended with 
fable and romance, that go back, Baedecker 
affirms, to the year one — to Cymbeline and King 
Lear, perhaps. Parts of Warwick's old feudal 
walls are yet standing; the narrow streets with 



TRADITIONS OF AMY ROBSART 85 

over-reaching houses of brick and stone, are 
hoary with years and story, if stones could talk. 
Warwick Castle, where the present Earl lives part 
of the year, has been well preserved, and still 
shows evidence of its last siege in Cromwell's 
time. There are some beautiful views of it from 
the Avon, which Hawthorne admired as delight- 
ful embodiments of the past. 

Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick, contains monu- 
ments of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and 
his third wife, Lettice, Lady Essex. Local tradi- 
tion has it that she poisoned him and afterward 
married Christopher Blunt of the Essex Horse, 
a kind of poetical retribution for poor Amy 
Robsart, though Amy and Leicester had been 
married ten years or more when Elizabeth visited 
Kenilworth. In "Kenilworth" Scott gives the 
name Blunt to a rugged old warrior of Sussex, 
the companion of Raleigh. It is more than 
poetical justice that the name should finally 
triumph over Elizabeth's favorite, for Leicester 
was a showy incapable in his whole career, though 
effective use is made of him in the novel. A piece 



86 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

of needlework done by Amy Robsart as 
Leicester's first wife, is among the relics in the 
Leicester hospital near the Warwick Arms; but 
most of the local legends of Amy's sad fate 
survive fifty miles away, where, as the ballad 
relates : 

"The dews of summer night did fall ; 
The moon, sweet regent of the sky, 
Silvers the walls of Cumnor Hall, 
And many an oak that grows thereby." 

Our Warwick *'lad" with fresh horses drove 
us from the "Punch Bowl," as the sun was 
setting, over the road to Kenilworth, which 
unwinds itself through this country of ancient 
renown as deliberately as if it were keeping slow 
pace with time. Deep mossy nooks already in 
twilight, where Oberon and Titania might have 
held revel by the moon, appeared in the turns of 
the highway, or a shining glimpse was caught of 
the Avon in the valley below, burnished with the 
last rays of the sun. Such antiquated thatched 
and half-timbered cottages I saw nowhere else; 



THE ROAD TO KENILWORTH 87 

so moss-covered and worn by successive genera- 
tions of tenants that they had settled down into 
the soil — become part of the earth like the rocks 
— while the trees spread their gnarled limbs above 
the roofs in a perpetual twilight of foliage, and 
the knotted roots coiled themselves above and 
out of the mould to surround and protect them. 

Some new cottages, I observed, built for re- 
treats or lodges, were also thatched. There is 
nothing better, I was told, to keep out summer's 
heat or winter's cold. The straw about a foot 
thick on the roof, well packed, will permit no 
dampness to enter, and the low attic will be 
comfortable at night though the sun has been 
shining on the roof all day. The thatch lasts 
for years with a little care, unless the English 
sparrow burrows into it like a rat, to prevent 
which many roofs are covered with wire netting. 
If some of the American country houses where 
city people go to live in the sumrrler would use 
this hint they would make their rooms more com- 
fortable for their guests than shingle roofs are, 
and their homes more picturesque. 



88 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

Through such a road as this I could fancy that 
Amy Robsart on her sorrowful errand, the 
quondam blacksmith and Flibertigibbett, made 
their way to the Kenilworth festivities, though, 
I believe, as a fact, that they came from an 
opposite direction. A little back from the high- 
way is Guy's Cliff, where lived Guy of Warwick, 
one of the champions of Christendom. He it 
was who slew the "Dun Cow," a surviving relic 
I fancy, of the days of Jack the Giant Killer, I in- 
quired of our Warwick lad what kind of a beast 
this "Dun Cow" was, but even the memory of 
it had vanished from country tradition. Return- 
ing like another Ulysses after one of his crusades, 
Guy lived in a cave on the Cliff as a hermit, 
unrecognized — only revealing himself at death, 
as Enoch Arden did, to his wife who was after- 
wards buried with him in the cave, where their 
bones still remain. From this same Cliff the 
residence of the Percys now looks out upon the 
road through a beautiful vista of trees. 

Kenilworth Castle has a history in which Amy 
Robsart and Leicester are but later incidents. 



PIERS GAVESTON'S CAREER 89 

For a thousand years it is identified with the 
great events of English life — Roman, Saxon and 
Norman. It seems to have been the Windsor of 
the early English sovereigns, who admired its 
beauty and sought its security and strength up to 
Elizabeth's time from the days of William 
the Conqueror. After 800 years the legends 
of Piers Gaveston are still fresh and vivid. 
The name and the incident were, at the 
instant, but a vague memory to me, despite 
the tragic importance and veneration w^ith 
which the guide pointed out the shaft on the hill- 
side that marks the site of the execution. But 
Piers Gaveston was a greater man, and even a 
larger and more brilliant figure in history than 
Robert Dudley, Elizabeth's favorite. Detested as 
a foreigner by the barons whom he ridiculed and 
fought with native Gascon ability, Edward II. 
trusted him as his boyhood friend to the last, 
showing in this no kingly wavering nor coolness. 
He was a frank and gallant courtier, skilled in 
the tourney, brave in the field, and a fine wit, but 
a bugbear to the "Black Dog" Warwick and the 



90 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

English, who were tiring of French court and 
rule. When the King went to France for his 
bride, he made Gaveston regent and acting king 
during his absence. From Kenilworth Piers 
Gaveston ruled England, and when overcome 
and taken by the barons, he was executed on 
Blacklow Hill in sight of its towers. 

Then Kenilworth was in its glory, as to-day it 
is the most interesting ruin in England, telling 
plainly of the burden of a thousand years' service 
for the state. Its great walls of the old Norman 
period are fifteen feet thick, and into them were 
hollowed out the chambers where Amy Robsart 
was confined. Leicester spent nearly half a 
million in its restoration, but his work was in- 
ferior, and that portion is in worse condition 
to-day than the original walls. Each century 
placed its stamp in some new feature on the castle 
until it came to enclose an area of seven acres, 
as large or a larger space than Union Square in 
New York — room enough to assemble and gar- 
rison it with the population of a town. To the 
south and east within the outer wall ran a deep 



KENILWORTH CHRONICLES 91 

moat, and a large lake protected the other ap- 
proaches. Such massive towers and walls could 
only be taken by treachery, or after a protracted 
siege, and they withstood these sieges successfully 
for months in the reigns of the Henrys and 
Edwards, and the wars of the Barons. Henry II. 
revived there the memories of King Arthur's 
Round Table ; and the tilt yard recorded some of 
the most celebrated tournaments of chivalry. 
Simon de Montfort did a greater thing than he 
knew when he called from Kenilworth a con- 
ference which was one of the beginnings of the 
English Parliament. Popes, Knights Templars, 
Robert Bruce of Scotland, kings and titled sub- 
jects have suffered or died within its dungeons, 
as one can easily believe from what is still seen 
of those damp and noisome cells. In the deepest 
of the keep that Edward II. of whose story 
Marlowe made his tragedy, was imprisoned, 
where he could hear the revelry at the banquets 
of his faithless queen and Roger Mortimer, who 
extorted from him his resignation of the crown. 
Now it is difficult to trace the castle moat. The 



92 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

lake has vanished in air, or it exists Hke a geologic 
tradition, leaving green meadows where the 
waters were. The outer ramparts from which 
the country around built its cottages and repaired 
its roads for years, are leveled. A hundred feet 
of earth is piled above the dungeons, the secret 
postern and the pleasure grounds, where knights 
of old fought and w^ooed. Even the bridge over 
which Elizabeth entered the Leicester festivities 
and the grotto where she encountered Amy seem 
a fairy myth — only the massive towers and the 
winding, narrow stairways, cut within the walls, 
and worn deep with centuries of treading, and 
the Gothic tracery of the banquet-hall windows, 
remain to tell that the triumphs, the loves and 
sorrows that were gathered here in many genera- 
tions of royalty were not a mere fabric of the 
fancy. Flushed with the sunset glow this rugged 
old ruin enshrined in ivy, stood forth like a moun- 
tain shelf, decadent, yet defiant, seeming still, with 
the assurance of years, to glory in its strength, 
mystery and fable — a sphinx, or creature so 
remote as to set at naught the boasts and follies 



WILL KENILWORTH BE RESTORED? 93 

of the present, which it will outlive and bury with 
the past. 

It was Oliver Cromwell who struck down with 
heavy fist the old regime, and with it Kenilworth 
Castle. From Oliver's blow it never recovered. 
The walls were leveled and the moat filled by his 
orders, and there has been no attempt at restora- 
tion since. I wonder if there ever will be! It 
would not be strange with the enthusiasm of 
to-day for archseologic excavation that spades 
should be turned in these mounds of Kenilworth. 
Perhaps it may await a later decade of centuries, 
when the seat of empire has crossed the seas and 
reached another English civilization in the 
Pacific; or it may be the lot of an American 
millionaire to restore the glories of Kenilworth 
and enroll his name in those annals which register 
a thousand years of English rule. 

We were urged to remain longer, as the moon 
would rise an hour after nightfall, when we could 
see the ruin by moon light and hear the nightin- 
gale's song ; but there was a train at Warwick to 
be met — a fiery, grim and rampant monster, more 



94 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

exacting, more fierce and terrible in breath and 
aspect than Guy of Warwick's "Dun Cow." So we 
placed temptation behind, turned our backs on 
Kenilworth and drove rapidly away to the railway 
station. 




VIII 

THE RIDE FROM BIRMINGHAM 

T Birmingham a large, elderly woman 
in black, hale and cheerful-looking, 
followed behind me into the station. 
Presently her large hat, a curious 
composite of bows and ribbons, appeared at the 
door of the compartment I had chosen, and she 
entered attended by a porter, who carried an 
enormous tin hand case, one of those coated with 
a kind of bronze varnish, glowing like an obfus- 
cated yellow flame, which appear to be a favored 
variety in English travel. 

When it and other luggage had been stowed 



96 



TEN DAYS ABROAD 



away in the rack above her head 
the owner smiled cheerfully, 
observing that she believed it 
would be safe. I had doubts of 
the rack, in case of weakness. 
We were the only through pas- 
== sengers to Edinboro' in the 
^ compartment — others going and 
coming where the train stopped 
at the special stations. At every 
stop my fellow traveler applied 
to the guard about a "wheel" 
which was on the train. I 
learned later that she was from 
Birmingham, on a visit to rel- 
atives in Scotland, a widow 
and a bicyclist, the "wheel" taking the place 
in her affections occupied by her late hus- 
band. Presently the guard showed her the 
bicycle safely cared for in the luggage compart- 
ment of a passenger coach directly behind our 
own, whereat she settled down in the seat with 
a sigh of relief and contentment. 




A BIRMINGHAM 
PASSENGER 



JOHN BUNYAN'S CIRCUIT 97 

The day was mild, the sky clear and blue. 
We were passing through that old Saxon 
Mercia near the border of Wales, so long the 
battle ground of the ancient Britons, the 
domain of King Arthur and Guinevere, the 
bards and the Llewellyns. To the south 
and east were left the pretty country of 
the Avon which has been so abundant in its 
gifts to modern letters and public life — Bedford, 
the circuit of John Bunyan, the traveling tinker, 
the dream-land of his delightful allegory; 
Leicester, near which Macaulay was born; the 
Abbey where Cardinal Wolsey died ; and not far 
away the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin's 
father. Around Stoke, Crewe and Wigan, the 
great cloth manufacturing district of Manchester 
and Leeds, through the skirts of which the North- 
western Line passes, the country is at best 
monotonous. It seemed that a diligent search 
might even to-day identify in this vicinity some of 
the sources of the Pilgrim's Progress — the Slough 
of Despond; or the dread dungeons of Doubt- 
ing Castle and a Giant Despair by the roadway. 



98 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

There are many smoking factories now on every • 
side — what Ruskin has called ''bellowing, hoot- 
ing, soot-scattering creatures in every valley" — 
though a country curate who joined us presently 
took a more hopeful view of the land. 

This curate was a slender, dark man, of a 
happy. Dr. Primrose temperament. He was 
returning to his home near Carlisle from a 
vacation, in high spirits and much gratitude to 
his parish for their generous consideration of his 
welfare. He, too, carried a bicycle which 
established a bond of sympathy with the Birming- 
ham lady, and his enthusiasm was so contagious 
over delightful excursions by wheel along beau- 
tiful country highways and byways, that I quite 
envied his clerical life, its long vacations and 
opportunities. Every new prospect from the 
car window — though he sat in the middle seat — 
called out expressions of admiration, in which 
the charming weather and "the glory of living 
under the beneficent rule of the Queen — God 
bless her !" were included ; while the anticipation 
of rejoining his family after a widely separated 



A COUNTRY CURATE 99 

absence, was fully equal to the other pleasures 
of his trip. This was the first separation from 
them, and the first ''breather," he observed, 
shortly, that he had taken in years. His presence 
was urgent at a parish meeting that afternoon, 
when, coming four by the clock, he would have 
been away just five days, and in that interval 
he had traveled not less than 150 miles. 

That tender, respectful deference to the Queen 
was one of the pleasant, prevailing manifestations 
throughout England and Scotland. I do not 
think it merely mouth homage either, but an 
earnest expression of loyalty, respect for the 
sovereign and regard for the woman, that came 
from the heart of the people — an expression we 
often read of in the past, but I doubt if many 
sovereigns have evoked it as Victoria did. We 
bade the good vicar regretful farewells at parting, 
having entered fully and heartily into his hopeful 
spirit, cheerful labors and enthusiasms. A few 
minutes later from our train we caught a passing 
glimpse of him, speeding along over his wheel, 
beyond the suburbs of the ancient town, in the 

LofC. 



100 



TEN DAYS ABROAD 



direction of his family group and a little church 
spire in the distance. His vacations are shorter 
than those of ministers at home. But the English 
country and city clergy have 
opportunities, and with stead- 
fast patience and devotion they 
have improved them for their 
country's good and their own 
honor. From Matthew Paris, 
Roger Bacon and John Ball, 
down to John Richard Green, 
they have been the makers of 
JOHN BALL PREACHING plain Eugllsh spccch, free and 
patriotic thought and England's literature: — 

"When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Who was then the gentleman?" 




Our train was an express, not "The Flying 
Scotchman," nor had it the many little comforts, 
or the speed of a through train to Buffalo on the 
New York Central; but a kind of home-like 
atmosphere had developed in our compartment. 
I did not know the railway regulations for meals, 



GOOSEBERRY TARTS AND MEAT PIE loi 

and my stomach had begun to clamor for recog- 
nition, when the Birmingham lady spread open 
the contents of one of her packages. It proved 
to be a bountiful hamper, to which she cordially 
invited the participation of myself and two others 
of the compartment — women fellow-travelers. 
There was a meat pie large and thick enough 
for a bigger dinner party; some fine gooseberry 
tarts, made with her own hands, and an unlimited 
supply of fresh gooseberries, fresh picked from 
her own garden, and as large and luscious as 
California cherries. Gooseberries and gooseberry 
tarts are favorite dainties in England. I have 
never eaten such berries, which were, indeed, a 
complete offset and correction to the meat pie — 
an English dainty that Dickens' people were 
very fond of; though American kin have first 
to be acclimated before they can appreciate or 
digest it. Only the liquid was wanting to 
complete a feast — 

"If we only 'ad a sip o' tea, naow !" one of the 
ladies remarked confidentially. Having been 
watching, I caught the eye of the guard who 



102 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

quickly delivered us a bowl of tea each, sugar 
and milk included — large bowls, thick and heavy, 
warranted to withstand any ordinary railway col- 
lision, at "tuppence" apiece — and the guard 
touched his hat at a shilling. It was very good 
tea the ladies said. I am not a judge myself nor 
a tea drinker, and as the train was about to start, 
I was in a quandary how I should dispose of such 
a bowl of boiling beverage, without serious in- 
ternal consequences, when my hostess observing 
the dilemma, explained that we might eat and 
drink at leisure, turning the cups over to the 
guard at the next station, a timely custom to 
which I drank with quiet, internal gratitude. 

The old Roman wall passes through Carlisle, 
where many traces of it still remain to show how 
stoutly walls were built when the ancestors of 
the English race were yet savages. A little 
beyond, the Waverley country begins, where Sir 
Walter Scott lived, and where Young Lochinvar 
came out from the West. Near by from Ecclefe- 
chan came a still more hardy prototype of this 
bleak and rugged environment, Thomas Carlyle, 



HIGHLAND AND LOWLAND 103 

who was born there, and is buried in the church 
yard. My Birmingham fellow traveler knew the 
country well. She pointed out the neighborhood 
of Gretna Green, and many an old pile and 
forsaken ruin as we entered the Cheviot Hills. 
The hills are mostly bald and treeless except for 
plantations of fir, or areas purple with Scotch 
heather. Along the roadside, on hill and in glen 
the yellow Ragwort and the Queen-of-the- 
Meadow swayed and tossed their heads in 
greeting; and from the hill tops flocks of 
sheep, not plump Southdowns, but lank and 
hardy mutton, with black faces, tended only 
by sheep-dogs, regarded us with a vague, 
passing curiosity. There were stone pens and 
enclosures for the sheep in time of storm, and 
cairns of stone at frequent intervals, but houses 
and barns were poor and few, and the barren 
land looked as if it had not yet recovered from 
the blight and forays of Highland and Lowland. 
Approaching Edinburgh the buildings im- 
proved in number and appearance. As we entered 
the Caledonian station in the environs, we found 



104 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

a friendly escort awaiting my genial Birmingham 
companion. They shouldered her bronzed, tin 
trunk, carried away her wheel, and, when we had 
parted with mutual expressions of regard, took 
possession of that cheerful and kindly woman. 
The train carried me on to the Waverley terminus 
in Princess Street Garden. It is in the center of 
the old Scotch town, overlooked on the one side 
by the ominous Castle walls from their rocky 
prominence, and the eerie tenements of the old 
city ; and on the other by the great marble monu- 
ment to Walter Scott whom Scotchmen never tire 
to honor and exalt — ^and* the new city with its 
broad, modern streets, substantial buildings and 
attractive shops. 



IX 



EDINBORO' TOWN 



•^r OUNG NIGEL would find Edinboro' a 
^ cleaner city to-day than he knew it 

l^^^^l in the days of stuttering King Jamie ; 
or than it was at the later date of 
Allan Brek and Davie Balfour. How did they 
keep clean then in the sense that we know ? Queen 
Mary's palace at Holyrood would be lacking in 
essential comforts to the average American girl 
of to-day, and Queen Mary of the Scots was well 
advanced in all the niceties of life in her time. 
They had no back yards or flowing water up in 
those hillside flats of the old city. How they 



io6 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

washed their plaids and tartans is a wonder — 
if they did wash them. Most of the plaids and 
tartans that I saw in Edinboro' were swinging 
from those high old stone windows, along that 
weird and wicked-looking High street to Canon- 
gate. The tenants hung them out from a stick 
forked like a crutch to spread and air, and the 
crutch evoked a sinister reminiscence as the gar- 
ments waved and flapped overhead, suggestive 
of the three old crones in Macbeth^ and their 
doleful chant : 

"Double, double, toil and trouble; 
Fire burn and chaldron bubble !" 

Damp and dark these hillside apartments must 
have been at best. The casements that remain 
of the old hostelries off the street, are crusted 
with the grime of years. They bend under their 
own weight, as if ready to fall. Opposite them 
my guide pointed out as we ascended the hill to 
the Castle, a dark and malevolent stone balcony, 
projecting over the sidewalk, from which he 
repeated, Argyle had looked down in triumph 



A PIPER AND CABMAN 107 

on Montrose being led past to execution; and 
* 'followed himsel' within a three month under the 
same balcony." 

I do not know if he quoted history or his own 
license — he could do both. Aleck was the only 
Scotchman wearing a Highland costume whom 
I met in Edinboro'. That evening he was 
playing the bagpipe on Market Square when 
a Scotch policeman touched him on the 
shoulder with an invitation to move on and 
scatter the crowd. Aleck moved sullenly 
away, muttering some objurgation of the 
law that prevented a poor man from turning >?- 
an honest penny, when I condoled with him 
as he passed me, and I was surprised to find 
how quickly and sapiently he discovered that 
I was a stranger, and had not yet seen the 
town — how soon his grievances were healed, and 
with what promptitude he placed his services at 
my disposal. Before I had finished an early 
breakfast the next morning he was on hand with 
a cab, transformed from a Highland piper into 
a respectable Scotch cabby, with a fluent display 




ALKCK 



io8 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

of information on all topics, that was interesting 
if not wholly according to Hoyle. 

''Mind," I emphasized, "you must have me at 
the railway station in time for the train, or you'll 
not get a penny for yourself or your cab." 

" 'Be it for better, or for waurse, 

Be ruled by him thot ha'e the purse ;' " 

quoth he, as he whipped up and we drove off. 

The old town with its houses of ten or twelve 
stories clinging to the hillsides, shows that early 
Scotch propensity to get into high altitudes. If 
the hill had been a mountain and afforded back- 
bone I have no doubt the town would have 
climbed higher, but, it secured a good outlook 
and spread over the ravine, making the modern 
city. Then the Castle went into the background 
giving way for the University, and when the 
Edinburgh Review began to thunder so loud 
and far, about a century ago, it quite put out of 
countenance Mons Meg, the great old cannon 
on the Castle walls, sending it into antiquity. 
Edinburgh is, to be sure, a far away northern 



A LINCOLN MONUMENT 109 

site to give so strong an Attic savor to an entire 
century. The Review thunders more gently 
now than in former days, but the universities of 
Edinburgh and Glasgow have yet a strong voice 
and influence in public policies, and barley broth 
and oat meal cake are still a potent factor. 

Edinburgh does not forget her sons either. 
Along with Walter Scott and Robert Burns, she 
has enshrined Jeffreys, Brougham, Wilson (Kit 
North), De Quincey and Chambers, beside Allan 
Ramsey, Hume and Adam Smith. Even the later 
names begin to seem remote now with the passage 
of the century. In the Calton Hill Cemetery 
there is a monument to the Highlanders who fell 
in the American Civil War, and one also to 
Abraham Lincoln. The Castle type of archi- 
tecture is reproduced in the prison pile on 
Waterloo Place, and reflected in the High School, 
although the latter has a Grecian portico, and 
in appearance is the most American-looking 
public school that I saw abroad. The University 
and its venerable walls I had merely a glance of, 
but I could not refrain from lingering a moment 



no TEN DAYS ABROAD 

at Holyrood, that remnant of the hard stone pile 
where the fair, young, girl widow of Francis, 
came in contact with her fate and the hard, hard 
world. 

Poor Scots Mary ! The world was not made 
soft and pleasant for princesses ! A rough time 
she had of it all amid smiles and caresses, and the 
frowns and rebukes of her Covenanters. How 
she must have dreaded and detested stern old 
John Knox and all his creed. She never could 
understand them or for what earthly use they 
were intended, any more than they could sympa- 
thize with her nature. She was a creature all 
made up of lightness, brightness, gaiety, pangs, 
and tears, to dissolve at last in contact with 
another woman. They were much like other 
women, and adepts at the needle. Mary would 
have her sewing basket and work at hand during 
the daily conference with her ministers of state. 
I fancy them both light-haired, but in Elizabeth 
the Tudor falcon, a deeper strawberry tint. It 
was a battle royal of fair-haired women in which 
victory went as usual to the most powerful, not 



"QUEEN MARTS BARTH ROOM" iii 

to the most beautiful. Perhaps a fatal outcome 
was to be expected either way, for the isle was 
not "beg eno'/' rny guide observed, ''for the twa 
of them/' and one head must fall. Time which 
makes things even, sets Mary ahead. It gave her 
descendants the throne — even Edward to-day 
bearing more direct kinship with her than with 
Elizabeth. 

Queen Victoria has often occupied the Queen's 
Palace in Edinburgh, which adjoins the ruins of 
Holyrood, the broad driveway passing directly 
through the site of the old palace. 

''D'ye see the wee stane wall yander?" Aleck 
pointed out with his finger, as we passed a 
fragment of ruin, a kind of rounded bay — " 'Twas 
Queen Mary's barth room," he continued. "She 
allers barthed in white wine — and they found 
the dagger of Rizzio in her barth room." 

This was a new version to me of the tragic 
episode. So a breath of calumny goes down 
through the centuries a smirch upon the fairest 
copy ; or hovers round its victim like a fell aroma 
— a subtle spell cast by the malign and haunting 



112 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

spirits of evil. 

And stern, rigid old John Knox! A tablet in 
the open space in front of the Parliament build- 
ings, marks his last resting place, just beyond the 
base of the equestrian monument of Charles II., 
which has since been placed there. The presence 
of the ''Merry Monarch," should, I think, sit 
heavy on John Knox's chest. If there were such 
things as "ghaists" in these later days it would 
press one forth. Charles, with the long, waving 
hair falling over his shoulders, has a strong, 
pleasing face and carriage, as he usually had to 
the last, despite other failings. Aleck, in whose 
veins doubtless ran a strain of Scotch Presby- 
terianism, called my attention to the characters 
on the monarch's coat : 

"He carries the feast o' the de'ils on his breast," 
said he; ''and on his back the angels, whilk 
signifies the deceits o' Satin that he kept up all 
his life, and to the last." 

I would have lingered after train time in these 
narrow old streets, had he not reminded me of 
the hour. Then we rattled down the paved hill 



A PARTING TIP 113 

to the Waverley Station. Aleck had earned his 
money, and, in parting, I wished him better luck 
hereafter with his bagpipe. He tipped me a 
shrewd Scotch wink, adapting in reply as I turned 
away to the station, a sign that I had noticed on 
the street : 

"The Pickwick, the Owl and the Waverley kin, 
They come as a boon and a blessing to min." 




X 



THROUGH THE TROSSACHS 

ROM Edinburgh a favorite trip is a 
pedestrian tour through the Trossachs. 
The roads are good, the inns comfort- 
able and the cHmate in August not 
unHke that of the Adirondacks. Tourists in 
knickerbockers with knapsack and staff are 
encountered on every highway, and the example 
is contagious, for this is the real way to see the 
country. Many men and women make the tour 
on the bicycle, as the steep grades are few, and 
the "wheel" is as popular as it was with us a 
year or two ago, while the bicyclists appear also 



A GREAT SCOTCH BRIDGE 115 

to have increased the number of pedestrians. 
My steamer was to sail on Thursday from 
Glasgow which is but little more than an hour's 
journey by rail from Edinburgh. This left me 
a day for the tour by the circular loop to Stirling, 
thence through the mountains and Lochs Katrine 
and Lomond around to Glasgow — ample time 
I was assured for the accommodation of the 
tourist whose welfare has been developed into a 
fine art in this country. So I chose the northern 
route through the country of "mountain and 
flood," and had no occasion to regret it. 

The morning was crisp and clear over the 
lowlands as we left the Scotch capital behind. 
But a mist still clung above the broad stretches 
of the Forth where our train crossed the big 
cantilever bridge which is one of Scotland's 
great engineering triumphs at home. Spanning 
the river, nearly a mile wide here, it is by no 
means a thing of beauty. Like an ugly though 
mighty Colossus, it looks down on old-time fords 
and ancient ferries that, from the days of 
Wallace, were the natural barriers between 



ii6 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

Scotland and her foes. 

An hour's ride brought us to StirHng, the 
Windsor of the old Scottish kings. There the 
old castle stands out against the sky upon a high, 
rocky bluff, grim and rugose, reflecting the very 
essence of those hardy Scotch Covenanters. 
For these ancient fortresses perched upon their 
inaccessible cliffs, had a moral as well as a 
physical prestige. Seen at a distance they were 
the glum and silent sentinels of the land. One 
old building in Stirling still bears the moral senti- 
ment, inscribed by the Earl of Mar three hundred 
years ago : 

"The moir I stan on oppin hitht, 
My faults moir subjec ar to sitht — " 

a bit of conscience which in castles as in other 
human works can hardly be said to have softened 
the hearts of the builders perceptibly, the self- 
deprecation notwithstanding. Beyond the castle 
near the end of the bluff, is that curious, pillow- 
like mound; upon it a stone block which many 
a titled head has had for its last pillow in past 



A GLIMPSE OF STIRLING 117 

days, ere it rolled a gory mass to the earth. 
It was in Stirling" Castle that a Douglas was 
stabbed to death by his King James. Here at 
Stirling is the monument to Wallace. His 
huge sword, that is shown to visitors, is more 
than five feet in length — a pretty sickle it would 
make in these industrial days, I thought, as 
I scanned the broad blade, if curved and fitted 
to swing in the cradle of some brawny New 
England harvester. 

From Stirling James Fitz James went forth 
to hunt at early morn, and came by night a 
weary huntsman without horse or hounds to the 
Lady of the Lake. To Stirling also Ellen and 
Malcolm Grame are brought at the close of the 
poem ; and there Roderick Dhu, the wounded 
chieftain, listens, as he dies, to the Harper's song 
of the Highland fight. Not far beyond are the 
Grampian Hills, of whose "father's flocks," we 
often declaimed in school days. On every side 
are snatches of Scottish song in legend and story, 
and still conspicuous in actual life and widely 
placarded advertisement, is a choice strain of 



ii8 



TEN DAYS ABROAD 



the spirits of Roderick Dhu — real Scotch 
courage, that the fierce Highland chieftain would 
perhaps himself have relished as a national 
tribute. 

From Stirling it is but a short run by rail 
to the Clachan of Aberfoil. The Hotel Bailie 
Nicol Jarvie is no such desolate place as its 
namesake found the vicinity in the 
pages of Rob Roy, but a charming 
modern caravansary at the threshold 
of the mountains. Beside it spreads 
a broad, but stunted, ancient moun- 
tain oak. To the trunk of the tree is 
attached by a strong chain a pon- 
derous cleaver, which two small boys 
explained in Highland dialect, was the 
identical poker which the Bailie seized from the 
fire to defend himself with. Their speech was 
not wholly intelligible to American tourists, who 
catching a word or two, concluded that the inci- 
dent related to a record game of "poker" played 
by t]ie redoubtable Rob Roy on some auspicious 
occasion; and the group of Oxford students 




THK 
BAILIE NICOL JARVIE 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 119 

in Tweed knickerbockers, with heavy walking 
sticks and briarwood pipes, admitted that they 
were equally ignorant not "being up in Walter 
Scott," as "3. little out of date, and somewhat 
too romantic, you know;" later they became 
more deeply interested in the story of the poem 
of the Lake, and Rob Roy — every mountain 
breath inhaled romance, and set the veins a-tingle, 
contrary to the measure of material things. 

A horn sounding, our party, numbering a full 
score, clambered to seats on top the coach with 
the driver. He cracked his whip and shouted. 
Four sleek and handsome bays swung out from 
the Bailie Nichol Jarvie, in rattling, glittering 
harness, with the pride and carriage of horses 
on parade. Our road wound smooth and hard 
six miles over the mountains to Loch Katrine. 
This mountain air was an intoxicant, tonic with 
oxygen. In the glowing sun there was the 
friendly warmth of a genial companion. The 
sky was a cloudless blue, and groups of wheel- 
men, and pedestrians, men and women, threw 
us greeting as they strode — 



120 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

"From the mountain to the champaign, 
From the glens and hills along, 
With a rustling and a tramping, 
And a motion as of song — " 

The Trossachs here are not unlike the Hudson 
Highlands — hills dome-shaped, or bulbous in 
contour like Anthony's Nose, but nearly devoid 
of trees. Flocks of sheep were scattered among 
the heather almost invisible amid the craigs, that 
otherwise were bare and deserted. Here and 
there on the road offering bunches of wild flowers 
for a penny were bonny and brawny Scotch 
lassies — their head a shock of tawny red or yel- 
low, their skirts scant and tattered, their feet 
brown and bare, but with cheeks that had the 
rich flush of the pink heather, and bright een 
aglow with the soft azure of the mountain blue 
bell. 

One little group that we had left, had watched 
us from the coach yard of the hotel — the eldest 
of these was not in her teens^ and the small- 
est was a dainty wee damsel of half a dozen 
summers, whose waxen cheeks were a pair of 



WEE SCOTCH LASSIES 121 

ruddy apples beneath her flaxen ringlets. They 
were bashful little brownies; a mischievous 
Scottish twinkle in their shy glances and dimpled 
chins — too shy to respond to any approaches ex- 
cept with sidelong glances, even when I dropped 
a package of chewing gum at their feet, though 
the temptation was a mighty one. But as we 
turned to climb the coach there was a flutter and 
scurry and the nymphs disappeared like a flock 
of birds whom the air had swallowed up — and 
with them the chewing gum. Turning the 
mountain road we saw them again dividing the 
spoil, and at this safe distance they fearlessly 
waved their little hands in return. 

Loch Katrine, a pretty little scenic poem, is 
such a strip of lake as the Hudson might frame 
in the hills above West Pointy and Ellen's Isle 
but one of many romantic nooks along its shores. 
Swift and strong our steamer, the "Rob Roy," 
clove its rippling, crystal waters, the shouts of 
the tourists echoing back from the hills as the 
Highland clans of yore. They are gone like 
"the dew on the mountain." You no longer see 



122 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

"The Moray's silver star ! 
The dagger crest of Mar !" 

Loch Katrine has come to serve a practical 
purpose as the reservoir for Glasgow's water 
supply. Its crystal springs now flow into the 
heart of the city, inspired draughts, sparkling 
with native poetry and romance. The water 
works upon the banks of the lake are more for- 
midable than the strongholds of Roderick Dhu, 
and the clang of the machinery more shrill than 
the "Pibroch of Donald." 

At Stronachlacher the head of the loch, another 
coach and four were in waiting for another cheer- 
ful rumble through a valley in which gathering 
peat and stacking it in piles for winter consump- 
tion appeared the chief occupation. This 
brought us to Inversnaid, the home of Rob Roy, 
with appetites whetted. A special providence, 
no interposition of inn keepers being counted, 
had set a hearty meal for us here, to which we did 
full justice before the arrival of the Loch Lomond 
steamer. Oiit upon the bosom of this charming 
and larger lake, a bevy of great white gulls like 



LEAVING THE LAKES 123 

garden fowl, followed the steamer, so tame as 
to rest on the wing almost within hand's reach, 
and take the bread that was fed them. Ben 
Lomond raises its back, broad and round, 3,000 
feet above the western border of the loch; and 
the brownish forehead of Ben Venue looks down 
from a distance like the red head of a bashful 
school boy, on the isles, the decadent castles and 
the lowland visitors swarming there from the 
ends of the earth. 

The steamer's route ends at Balloch. One 
more brief spurt and the train, like an Arabian 
Jinni — the genie who has transformed the medie- 
val into this modern world — plunges into the 
earth, to emerge after long toil and puffing, 
through smoke and dark, in the heart of Glasgow, 
the London of Scotland and the second city of 
the United Kingdom. 



XI 
IN GLASGOW STREETS 



S we entered the hotel at Glasgow, the 
doors swung open wide. A major- 
domo at the entrance received us 
with a sweep of the hand, and 
a grand salaam as if the Great Begum had 
stepped down from the clouds for his especial 
benefit, and I glanced behind to see whether, by 
mistake, I had unwittingly committed a breach 
of etiquette, by treading in advance of the Royal 
Family. Flukes or flunkies, Thackeray was it 
not, v/ho used to style them so? I could never 
think of so belittling this Glasgow functionary 



A SCOTCH MAJORDOMO 125 

in sandy whiskers, blue uniform, knee breeches, 
gilt braid and buttons. But it is a human failing 
to make allowance for unusual manifestations 
and consideration, when extended to oneself, and 
to the last I continued to regard this distin- 
guished personage with deep interest as a sur- 
vival of past glories — a Drum Major or a 
Grenadier on house duty. 

Day dreams of the past week had been left 
behind in the mountains, or they had gathered 
up their skirts and vanished at sight of the dust, 
smoke and hubbub of a modern city. And 
Glasgow is more modern than any we had seen 
for many days. In George's Square that evening 
a great audience assembled to commemorate the 
birthday of Sir Walter Scott. His monument 
in the square only second to that in Edinburgh, 
is nearly one hundred feet high, overtopping those 
of the Queen and the Prince Consort. It was 
tastefully decorated on this occasion with flowers 
and flags, and a vocal and instrumental concert 
was given by choral societies and public school 
children. The monuments of Robert Burns, 



126 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

Dr. Livingstone, and the poet Thomas Campbell, 
are also in the Square, and it is the custom to 
honor them in the same manner. 

With a population of a million Glasgow 
recalled Philadelphia in some things. It is a 
great industrial and commercial center, a reverent 
and patriotic community, as well — more like an 
American city than London, with its street car 
lines and crowded street traffic, but without the 
feverish rush of New York or Chicago. In 
co-operative municipal experiments it has gone 
farther than any of our cities, and it maintains 
an economical city administration which is not 
obtrusive nor extravagant. The streets are 
clean and well ordered. Not only the water 
from Loch Katrine, is under municipal control, 
but so are the gas works and the street car lines. 
The car traffic is not so heavy as in our cities, 
but it appears well managed, and turns a profit 
annually into the city treasury. Glasgow is 
probably the only city where you can ride on a 
street car for one-cent — ha'penny — fare, and 
electric traction is to be introduced shortly on all 



A NATIVE OF GLASGOW 127 

the lines. The town is associated in my mind 
from pubHc school days as the native city of that 
venerable William Wood, one of the founders 
of the Normal College in New York, and a 
member for more than a quarter of a century 
of the New York Board of Education. At eighty, 
he was still the incisive^ courteous and vigor- 
ous Scotch gentleman such as I met on Glasgow 
streets, carrying with him early memories, zeal 
and native training, and the delicious Glasgow 
burr-r-r upon his speech. The University which 
he venerated is a stately and historic pile. Near 
it now approaching completion are the buildings 
for the Glasgow International Exposition of 1901. 
This, which opens in May, is to be a supreme 
effort, and surely no English city is better able 
to do justice to such an enterprise. 

The Cathedral and the shopping streets, 
Argyle and Buchanan and their clan suggestions, 
Avere of interest, but the distinct municipal feat- 
ures were more novel to me. Scotch thrift 
shows itself in careful directions but the super- 
vision is intelligent and liberal even in small 



128 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

matters. At the windows of the poorer dwell- 
ings as well as of the better sort, I saw many 
flowers, to which much attention seemed given. 
These plants I was told the city parks furnished 
in little boxes of galvanized iron to fit the 
windows at an expense of a few pence — a sugges- 
tion that might be useful in our own parks, 
w^here such quantities of beautiful flowers are 
grown. The public Green has a large building 
for public entertainments, known as the People's 
Palace, and a museum with many excellent 
collections. Some of the lawns of the Green are 
set aside for a practical use — where the Glasgow 
housewife may spread her linen in the sun to 
bleach. Old, barefooted women, and young girls 
employed to watch and turn the washing, are 
stretched out upon the grass beside the linen, 
with dingy shawls wrapped about their heads. 
They lie out under the rays of the bright sun, in 
quite a pastoral, shepherd fashion, but rolled up 
in dilapidated rags that are not poetical. 

A massive stone archway forms the main 
entrance to the Green, and from the inscription 



. A REVERENCE OF THE PAST 129 

I learned that it had been reconstructed of the 
facade and pillars of a building of historic 
municipal interest, which was torn down a 
number of years ago. The stone had been re- 
moved and preserved at the cost of an eminent 
citizen, whose name was duly honored. Even 
in London such a practice prevails. The facade 
of the National Academy in Trafalgar Square 
has been reconstructed from another old historic 
building, which would have been destroyed. 
This reverence of the past is not often evident at 
home. New York will in a year or two demolish 
its present Custom House, and with it that grove 
of huge granite monoliths, which for more than 
half a century has been standing at its portals, 
huge sentinels, giving silent assurance of the 
growing mercantile power of the city. In their 
day, before the railway, when Manhattan was 
still an infant, these great shafts were objects of 
veneration, which a mighty herd of oxen had 
drawn from the mountain quarries to the seaside, 
but the great columns, each an obelisk, are now 
likely to be broken for the stone pile. 



I30 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

Sometimes Scotch precaution may become 
excessive. The large ocean steamers sail from 
Greenock, several miles below Glasgow, and at 
the last moment I had nearly lost my train for 
Greenock. In payment of my hotel bill, having 
disposed of my English money as the time for 
sailing drew near, I tendered a draft sterling, 
which was declined. Then I produced a $io 
bill. This was indifferently examined and like- 
wise declined. There was no time for other 
provision, but by good fortune the Scotch major- 
domo came to my rescue. He had been 
in America and could vouch for a $io 
bill. He not only assured the proprietor 
that the paper was as good as a Bank 
of England note, but substantiated his state- 
ment with the information that Americans 
were excessively fond of griddle cakes, which 
they consumed at every meal in vast qtiantities. 
The number of cakes, which he averred, were 
eaten at a meal, I shall not attempt to repeat, 
but the information awakened more interest and 
discussion among the hotel authorities than my 



A CANNY SCOTCH COOK 131 

situation pending the departure of the steamer 
train. I did not question the accuracy of the 
majordomo's figures, but thanked him for certi- 
fying to the credit of Uncle Sam, and extended 
an extra compensation as he cashed the bill in 
English money himself. Then I was driven 
hastily to St. Enoch Station for the Greenock 
train. 

A good-sized tug was in waiting at the 
Greenock dock and from the train there poured 
out several hundred passengers, the greater 
number of whom were women, and many of 
them as I afterwards learned, school teachers. 
It was approaching dark when we had all been 
placed w^ith our baggage on the tug, carried out 
into mid-stream where the steamer lay, and 
transferred to it. At the last moment just as 
the tug was pulling away the chief cook of the 
steamer announced that he too was going back 
with the tug and sprang aboard of her. He 
was a canny Scotch cook, for he knew that a 
great steamer load of living passengers could 
not put to sea without a cook. The captain. 



132 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

the first officer and the agent of the Hne labored 
for half an hour with persuasive eloquence en- 
treating him to return. But he was an obstinate 
cook, and it was only when there had been 
promise of a specific advance in his wages that 
he permitted himself to be convinced and led 
back in a triumphal procession to the ship, 
where our dinner was under way with no one 
to supervise it. 

By the time dinner was over the banks of 
the Clyde were getting dim. A strong flavor 
of ocean filled the air, as the last trace of the 
United Kingdom merged with the darkness, and 
most of the passengers turned in early, for a 
long first night's rest on shipboard, as the Fur- 
nessia was due to stop below Londonderry on 
the North Irish coast, the next morning for 
passengers. 



XII 



THE NORTH IRISH COAST 



^T^ I HOSE of us up betimes caught a view 
^ J of the Giant's Causeway before the 
a^S I Furnessia entered Lough Foyle, at 
Moville. The Anchor Line boats all 
make the stop below Londonderry to take 
aboard passengers from Ireland. When they 
arrive early as on this occasion the stay is until 
afternoon and it gives all who wish a chance 
to set foot on Irish soil. Most of us were glad 
of that chance, for Moville, and Donegal are 
in the extreme north of Ireland, a most inter- 
esting country and the source, it was said, of 



134 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

many rare old Irish customs, and a choice strain 
of Irish bulls. 

The jaunting cars, which some call "jarvies," 
once on a lime would come cavorting out over 
the water from the Moville dock, a mile away, 
to the steamer's side, but this practice has been 
stopped at the protest of the boatmen w^ho now 
row the passengers ashore for a shilling the 
round trip. These jaunting cars — a score or 
more of them. — wait their turn at the dock, and 
for another shilling they wdll take you on a 
half day's ride to all places of interest about 
Moville. Several of these are within half a 
dozen miles; among them the remains of the 
Abbey and school which was founded by St. 
Patrick 590 A. D. and which at one time had 
700 students. There is also to be seen the battle 
site where Hiigh Finnliath, king of Ireland, 
defeated and drove away the Danes in 864. 
Near this site is Green Castle said to be one of 
the finest castle ruins in all Ireland, without 
prejudice to any others, which is not much, 
seeing that in Ireland they have not Scotch 



THE ORIGIN OF BALLYWHACK 135 

foresight and preservation wlien it comes to 
castles. 

Shrovebrim Brook is close by — its cool waters 
warranted a cure to any person who may 
have an evil intent or any unusual weight 
in mind, and especially helpful in bad cases 
of delirium. Toward Innishowen Head, at the 
top of Ballybrack Brae, a large boulder sunk deep 
in the earth is pointed out to the visitor. One 
morning early the Giant O'Flynn, being a little 
out of sorts, strode over from the Giant's Cause- 
way on his way to Shrovebrim, to drink the 
waters. In a wayward humor he picked this 
boulder from the mountain side at Glenagivney, 
and strove to throw it over the Lough to Ben- 
evagh. This was only a little distance of ten 
miles, but O'Flynn being in bad form that 
morning, not having breakfasted nor tasted his 
regular poteen, the stone slipped and fell short 
at Ballybrack, which was so nam.ed after him, 
bearing the same meaning as Bally whack, an 
exclamation peculiar to O'Flynn, and since 
come into general use. 



136 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

We did not attempt nor could we hope to 
see all these wonderful things in half a day, 
and for a shilling, but we heard of them, and 
of much more from these old "jarvies." The 
jaunting cars are a kind of one horse shay, the 
drivers shaggy and rugged centenarians. The 
age of their horses, like a woman's, is never 
guessed, because none has ever been known to 
die. Each car will carry four persons, besides 
the driver, but most of them carried six of the 
Furnessia's passengers — bright-faced Yankee 
school ma'ms many of them with note books. 
One Philadelphia clergyman, on agreement with 
the driver^ took the reins himself and drove. 
At the start the horses dashed away pell-mell 
along the narrow roadway like a park of artil- 
lery. Then all came to a sudden stand for no 
apparent cause, except previous habit, as with 
David Harum's bargain, and thumps, entreaties, 
and exclamations had no effect until they were 
ready to move. 

It was a gray morning, with low clouds and 
a misty sun which began to shine through as 



AN AMERICAN BIRD 137 

we rode. The sea breeze was bracing, and the 
jaunting car an anti-dyspeptic and an appetizer. 
These roads were hard and smooth^ though 
narrow, but the low, gray stone farm dwell- 
ings were isolated and lonely, if picturesque 
— no cows around them, no cackling hens nor 
roosters crowing. Dark stone walls, well made 
and ancient, ran along each side of the road- 
way, all overgrown with wild morning glories 
and fuchsias. In the field beyond, the Irish 
heather blossom was of lighter tint than the 
Scotch. A pretty blue, and a yellow flower 
brightened the bluffs, and the dainty Irish 
shamrock twined modestly in little fairy nooks. 
Our cavalcade gave joyous greeting to every- 
thing and everybody. Near one farm house a 
turkey started up on the road with anxious 
maternal cries for her brood. Every car load 
waved and hurrahed for the American bird, and 
the old gobbler over the wall joined the hurrahs 
with repeated, throaty tremulo, as if he recog- 
nized his countrymen. 

Green Castle, the limit of our ride, stands 



138 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

out upon a rocky cliff commanding the sea — a 
formidable fortress once to the Norse pirates, 
whom it could watch from the headland. The 
Red Earl, a ferocious wild man, built it, back 
in the fourteenth century. He had a beautiful 
daughter who w^as rescued from the quicksands 
on the sea shore by young Walter of the 
O'Donnells, her father's enemies. Afterwards 
Walter was made prisoner by the Red Earl, 
who, on detecting his daughter in an effort 
to release the prisoner, threw her down the cliff 
to perish, and thrust Walter in the deepest 
dungeon to starve. Then the O'Donnells and 
the O'Neills rallied their clans, stormed the 
castle, and sent the Red Earl to his fate. This 
is the story of Green Castle. A few more years 
of fierce north winds will leave little of these 
crumblmg walls and towers. Even now the 
castle is but a mound on the cliff, covered with 
green earth and vines where the shamrock 
nestles, and the deene mah dances by moonlight. 
And Moville, a little town with long clean 
streets, and plain stone dwellings, has an air 



ST. PATRICK'S GOOD MEASURE 139 

of loneliness. The stores are tended by old women 
and men. There are few children on the 
streets, and the young men have emigrated. 
But the Irish girl remains, her cheeks flushed 
in health, eyes a deep cerulean, and hair like 
the raven's wing. She is the bright spot of 
life and color, a healthful presence, with glance 
and a smile for all who come, and her native 
wit gives cheer to the town. Moville stores 
do a flourishing trade in blackthorn sticks ; also 
in the genuine Irish poteen, of which there are 
various grades, each with a bog flavor of its 
own and a potent charm that is better than 
quinine for malaria, and sovereign for rheu- 
matics or despondency. The poteen comes in 
quart flasks, fat and round, and half again 
the size of a modern quart cup, as measured 
by St. Patrick for pocket use, and handed down 
to tourists and posterity. 

Around Moville there is yet obtainable through 
favor but by the thimblefr.l only, some of those 
rare and ancient stills for which it has repute. 
That which was once traced back to the Garden 



140 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

of Eden, where Adam and Eve kept it in store 
for family use, has long since been exhausted. 
As a mark of distinction we were treated to a 
drop of ''Ninety Nine," which dated from the 
Flood, and was so dry, our host remarked, not- 
withstanding its antecedents, that it would not 
wet the glass. When the Ark in its wanderings 
became stranded on one of the submerged peaks 
of Donegal, a cask of Noah's private supply 
was thrown out and got embedded in the root 
of a tree, where it remained undiscovered until 
by accident it was dug up last year — '99. Other 
sources more modern are said to be in operation 
among the caves of Malin Head and Innishowen, 
which go down under the ocean depths to 
America. But even these have an atmosphere 
of doubt and many strange tales of mystery. 
An Irish piper being closely chased by the Cus- 
toms Police on one occasion entered Hell Pit, 
one of these caves, throwing away his poteen, 
which an officer picked up and found to be the 
pure juice. The officer waited and listened to 
the piper in the distance, but the piper did not 



THE EMIGRANTS FAREWELL 141 

come back. This was fifty years ago, since 
which time it has become known that he went 
down beneath the ocean by the underground 
route, and came up through the tunnel at 
Hell Gate, New York. 

By three o'clock the Furnessia's passengers 
had all returned, the 'ladies bringing clusters of 
wild flowers and plumes of heather, the men 
armed with blackthorn sticks and souvenir flasks 
of poteen. A thousand emigrants also joined 
our ship from Londonderry, and with them 
enough of household goods and gods, to fill 
a freight train. We sailed with full cabins 
in the saloon and the second deck ; and a crowded 
steerage. Forward the emigrants gathered in 
little groups, waving a last adieu to home and 
friends as the steamer turned about to sea. Soon 
we were passing Innishowen Head, where the 
ocean voyage begins, and where their native 
land fades from view. Sadly they held it in 
sight to the last. The women drew the children 
closer, as if to impress this parting view more 
strongly upon their tender memories, wrapped 



142 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

their shawls about them and wept. The eyes 
of sturdy, rugged men grew dim and red, while 
amid the tears and wailing, there were some 
who chanted mournfully the ballad of Innish- 
owen Head : 

"Round Innishowen, rgund Innishowen — 
Where many a storm and swirling moan 
Marks white the shoals — How wild and free ! 
How wild and free, the great, gray sea. 
That round me flows — and Innishowen. 

Thou great Sea-King, like Norsemen old, 
Have guided true — have guided true 
The wanderer home. And made him bless — 
And made him bless, the grand old ness 
Of Innishowen !" 

Down along the Irish coast bold cliffs and 
jutting headlands rise up hundreds of feet 
above the breakers, braving the winds and 
tides. The waves have eaten into them deep 
caves where the storms thunder and reverberate. 
Over the spray the gulls circle, the sea eagle 
shrieks and dives upon his prey. Sublime in 



THE OLD WORLD, ADIEU! 143 

its repose the majestic grandeur of this wild, 
desolate shore, the gray August afternoon, as 
we sailed by, I have never seen elsewhere. 
Roofing the cliffs and swelling above them 
against the sky were the mountains of Donegal, 
high as the Adirondacks and bare of trees, but 
thickly clad in heather, their rounded outlines 
seemed the recumbent forms of those giants of 
Irish story — "a wearing of the green." There 
were few houses and no life visible from the 
steamer's deck, on those great round hills, but 
narrow roads circle in yellow ribbons to the 
summits, and an American told me that a trip 
over them in a jaunting car was one of his 
most interesting experiences in Europe. 

This was our last sight of the old world. 
The setting sun threw soft chromatic tints 
upon the cliffs and m.ountains. Our steamer 
passed between the Aran Islands and the shore, 
turning her course, then, nearly due west over 
the North Atlantic. Later in the night, when 
most of the passengers had retired, a dull glow 
showed above the distant mountain ranges, 



144 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

deepening as we looked, until it appeared a 
smoldering volcano about to burst forth from 
a crater on their summits. Around it the clouds 
were fired with refulgence, and through them 
glided up the lurid moon. Blue-domed, silent 
and vast this ocean-amphitheatre was lit with 
mellow flame, as of an awakening world while 
yet the lights of dawn burn low, and all is 
still, though the curtain is lifted for the life 
drama to begin. A broad swathe of light swept 
down upon the sea. Presently it overtook the 
steamer passing on beyond to point a glowing 
pathway from the skies — from the old world 
with its chequered past, and all its restrictions, 
to the broader and freer, distant continent. In 
the wake of the Furnessia the waves tossed 
with weird and responsive significance, girdling 
our vessel in its course with phosphorescent 
flashes like a mystic circle inscribed by the 
mighty Magi of the ocean. 



XIII 



ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 



^T^ HE Furnessia struck a high northerly 
^ „ course across the Atlantic, continuing 
^^aa on it until the third day, when she 
turned south by west, sharp, by which 
route the Captain hoped to shave the Banks 
and avoid as much heavy fog as possible. In 
this manner he expected to accomplish a good 
average trip, for, if no heavy fogs were en- 
countered we should not have to slow up, and 
the chances would be in our favor to sight 
Sandy Hook within ten days. 

Half a dozen sea gulls followed us out from 



146 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

the Irish coast for those three days, and it was 
an unceasing source of interest to watch their 
vigilant method of patrol in the track of the 
steamer. All day long they hovered in the wake 
on tireless wing, usually making wide circuits 
over the steamer's track, in the fashion of dogs 
searching for a scent, so that it was rare that 
their sharp sight missed any article of food. I tried 
them several times by throwing over when they 
did not appear to be looking, a package of bread 
tied in paper, but, if it got some distance behind it 
was not lost, as they always had at least one 
patrol far to the rear, who was sure to espy 
anything that escaped the rest. They never 
seemed to rest unless it was for a few moments 
on the waves, or unless they did sleep on the 
wing at night. At meal time they would all 
come up at closer quarters to secure their share 
of the dinner refuse that was thrown over. After 
following us for nearly a thousand miles, on the 
third day they disappeared, and we saw them 
no more. This we were told was their usual 
custom, whether or not it was the limit of their 



THE SEA GULL'S INSTINCT 147 

endurance and ability to return, but the Captain 
said they never made the entire voyage across 
the ocean. I also recollected that about this 
distance from land we first encountered gulls 
on our passage over. Perhaps an instinct of the 
unknown restrains them — except returning ships, 
they have no objects or fixed localities like the 
carrier pigeon to guide them home. 

From the first night we ran upon chill and 
squally weather, which caused passengers who 
came on deck to seek the sunny and sheltered 
sides. Many did not make their appearance at 
all, and the tables were only half filled at meals. 
Following the holiday comes a reaction. To 
the qualms and nausea of the ocean is added a 
general exhaustion after six weeks' or two 
months' gallop over the continent, from which 
so many were returning. The enthusiasm, too, 
of an outward voyage is wanting in the first 
days of a return trip, where the end of the 
journey is yet so distant. There were deep- 
drawn sighs from figures with pale faces, at 
the rail, and something of the confidence even 



f 



148 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

of the American girl disappeared as she looked 
and longed for the distant home. One southern 
maid with dreamy eyes and a bright solitaire 
on the finger of the left hand looked out from 
under her rugs continually, her thoughts far 
away and her book neglected, as she gazed 
wistfully across the waste of waters, the end 
of which she feared would never come. And 
a robust passenger from a far western Iowa 
town, who climbed on deck the third day, weak 
and pallid, aided by a slender, little invalid wife, 
vowed that he would never leave their village 
home to cross the sea again. People might talk 
until they were dumb about foreign parts, but 
give him his own town, that was plenty good 
enough for him. 

Then there was an enterprising business man 
who had "rushed" the continent, "doing Rome 
at midnight by train," who proposed to organize 
a syndicate for building castles in New England 
of old stone fence walls. He guranteed to dupli- 
cate the finest ruin on the continent in six months, 
- and, for the accommodation of his fellow 



A STORM TRACK 149 

voyagers he offered to open up his syndicate 
right there on ship and take any of them in 
on the ground floor. I noticed that while many 
Hstened and agreed with him, no one appeared 
to have a desire to build castles on shipboard, 
and those who wanted chances and excitement 
found enough speculation in the steamer's daily 
run. 

Before reaching the Banks we entered a 
storm track — one of those currents in which 
storms circle and lose themselves in mid-ocean, 
and go wandering and whirling about as 
if in outer space, until they die from sheer want 
of breath. The air was often filled with a flying 
scud that at times came down in torrents of 
rain, or brightened suddenly and fled as the mist 
of a June shower. And with the bright sun 
and the blue sky for half an hour, everyone 
brightened and grew cheerful, and the cabin 
turned out upon deck. But this North 
Atlantic is cold. Even of an August morning 
you suspect a rim of ice in your salt water bath. 
Early in the season this is a neighborhood for 



I50 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

icebergs. A great French liner went down near 
here a year or so ago, leaving only a boat load 
of exhausted, frosted human beings to tell the 
story. It is not a sea to experiment in. Not 
even that fair maid from Perth, Canada, who 
longed for something rare and unexpected, cared 
for an experience of shipwreck in this locality. 
She had finished her college studies, and had 
been graduated with cap and gown in New 
York last spring, an athlete and a Bachelor of 
Arts. Returning from the European trip filled 
with the glory of the past, the majesty, the 
beauty and the poetry of the sea she longed to sail 
on and on for ever. 

Our ship, a great iron kettle somewhat old 
and time-worn as judged by the standard 
which modern service implies, but warranted 
stout, safe and whole, plowed onward its course 
alive with human freight. It recalled those 
maritime experiments of boyhood when I have 
seen a tin dish floated in a wash tub with a 
cargo of ants, or Blatta Germanic a (plain Croton 
insects), rushing to and fro to the water's edge, 



OUT OF THE WORLD 151 

which was made blue and sea-Hke with indigo, 
and was sometimes churned into storm and 
foam. Our greater number still longed for home. 
But as we drew south and turned the first half 
of the voyage the skies became warmer, the 
sun shone out, the tables filled and the decks 
swarmed again, or were piled with chairs and 
figures wrapped in rugs, and breathing new 
life and hope. Few talked of another trip abroad, 
and strange sights and foreign incidents and 
people were forgotten in the thought of homes 
and friends that were drawing near. 

For three days since leaving sight of land we 
had seen no trace of ship or sail upon the 
ocean. Where were they all ? Could aught have 
happened to the world in that interval ! At 
noon of the fourth day the Furnessia was 
pushing ahead through a thick mist, sounding 
at intervals of every few minutes her dismal 
foghorn, like some cow-maiden of the sea in 
distress, when there came an answering signal. 
Our ship slowed up. Her whistle sounded loud 
and strong — and directly another in reply came 



152 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

back through the fog, but with no appearance 
of another vessel. • 

Passengers poured out upon deck to see so 
strange a sight as another passing vessel, which 
none could see, but whose answering signal 
might have been taken for an echo, had it not 
distinctly differed in its tone from the whistle 
of our own steamer. So close at hand, it 
sounded coming from every quarter, or no 
distinct quarter, and yet remained unseen, that 
there was something weird and uncanny in it 
all — suggestive of the Phantom Ship or the 
Flying Dutchman himself — one realizes how the 
sea gives birth to strange and weird fancies. 
Then the white fog to the southwest, just off 
our bows, began to darken in midday, as from 
a pall, and the shadow broadened into enormous 
proportions — the colossal hull of a ship reaching 
upward to the skies, more like the outline of a 
mountain headland. The passengers from cabin 
and steerage, high and lower decks, looked on 
in common wonder at the great bulk of this 
approaching monster, when she broke through 



A PRAIRIE PREACHER 153 

the fog within a good pistol shot of our own 
vessel. At first it seemed treble, double — a fleet 
of steamers. Out in the open in clear sight it 
appeared only one, — a kind of *'tramp" or cattle 
steamer all boarded up on the sides. About 
her decks a handful of the crew moved scanning 
us as we passed, while she glided on behind us 
into the fog again and disappeared. 

Among the clergymen on the Furnessia 
many denominations were represented — one 
who seemed to represent them all, was in 
minor orders, an erratic product of prairie 
schools, with a smattering of Greek and 
theology. In him were curiously blended 
with turbulent fervor, the energies of a Langland 
or a crusading Peter — "a call" to preach on all 
occasions, and to recite illustrious sentiments and 
eloquence at other times. On deck one early 
morning I encountered him shouting to the sea 
in Shakespeare, and Byron's apostrophy. The 
flying cloud-wrack swept in mists across the 
steamer, dampening his long, black hair. His 
eyes rolled in fine frenzy as with one hand 



154 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

on the capstan for balance, the other waving, 
he strove to outvie the Furnessia's fog whistle 
and the ocean turmoil: — 

"What's Hecuba to him, 
Or he to Hecuba!" 

In that species of divine afflatus which had seized 
him, he vaunted his right as a free-born, 
American to revel. He had made his way 
through Europe on vacation without church or 
congregation at home, to defray his expenses, 
and now he was returning by steerage; but, 
with Yankee prerogative, the freedom of the 
ship was his. 

"Do you think," asked another passenger, also 
an American, a clear, serene-eyed, pretty little 
maiden of twelve summers, daughter of a 
missionary and born in China, but returning now 
to an American home : "Do you think the 
European nations are in decadence?" 

A question to stagger a great philosopher — 
such as often comes from children and novices, 
and often to the American traveler. Who shall 



THE VIRGIN ROCK 155 

say? Even if behind American ideas of progress, 
we have yet to learn all there is to know from 
the staid customs of France and England. He 
would be bold to say that Europe has reached 
the limit when more than once France has been 
behind in the race, and has won again the 
front place, while rivals went down in overcon- 
fidence. This struggle for place between two 
worlds, the old and the new, is it other than 
the old, old struggle of the animal, and of tribal 
man for dominion — of youth and vigor emerging 
from longanimous puppydom with swinging 
stride, lust of strength, assurance and impatience 
to relieve the elders at the helm ? 

Fair weather and mild returned now we had 
completed the first half of our trip and entered 
on the home stretch. The coast of Labrador or 
Newfoundland lay away to the west a thousand 
miles more or less — it did not matter. We were 
passing the Banks where the smacks of the 
fishermen appeared — the haunts of the Virgin 
of Kipling's Captain Courageous. Big schools 
of porpoise circled about and dove beneath our 



156 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

ship. Whales spouted every day at a httle 
distance alongside. By night the sun went down 
in colors as rich and flowing as Turner's sunsets — 
in floating sheen of silver and gold, with bars 
of effulgent carmine, that dissolved in agate and 
ivory, paving a glorious pathway to gates of 
pearl — ^the gateways to our homes. 




XIV 

SANDY HOOK 

HOSE last few days of our home 
voyage, were pleasant days, even 
when the weather was not all it 
might have been, for one got to know 
everyone else, by sight at least, on board the 
Furnessia. The ocean steamer — especially on 
a home voyage — is surely a potential factor in 
modern society. I fancy that Herbert Spencer 
will presently have to assign it a recognized 
place and influence in his system. So many lives 
are daily brought in contact on its decks, that 
would otherwise continue as remote as the Anti- 



158 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

podes, and the friendships and relations which 
are formed there often last through life, or 
serve to shape events thereafter. 

Frequently in England among English 
tourists on vacation tours, I heard the query: 
How do Americans — clergymen, teachers, 
and employes travel so far from home? 
The Englishman himself a great traveler at 
home and on the continent, does not so 
often stretch his horizon to the westward, 
unless he becomes an emigrant. Americans — 
from every State and clime — were in the 
majority in the cabin, accompanied often by 
Scotch or English kin, mild and passive in 
demeanor, who become in a single generation 
on American soil, the alert, pushing and vigorous 
Anglo-Saxon Yankee. 

On those last days at sunset and by twilight 
we had impromptu concerts either on deck, or, 
after dark in the saloon with piano music. 
Almost forgotten old ballads with their catching 
melodies and quaint words, sung in solo, in 
duet and chorus, touched many half-remem- 



SOCIAL LIFE ON SHIP 159 

bered chords with their simple cadences, in an 
audience so widely drawn from town and country 
of a broad land. Under the saloon balcony at 
concert hour, and in the home-like glow of the 
lamp at the dining table, a white-haired old 
Scotch lady, pHed her knitting needles steadily, 
while she followed through her spectacles the 
large type of her family Bible. Pulsing 
through the ship as she sways and forges on, 
the engines' throbs telling out the moments and 
circulating life, are the mighty heart-beats of 
this vast horologe, as it swings like a planet 
from continent to continent through its sphere ; — 
in intervals of song comes the long toot of 
the foghorn without, and perhaps a gleam of 
lights and an answering signal over the water 
from another steamer in the night. 

Each day the air became more mild and balmy. 
And of a morning when the charming Sandusky 
widow with the white, felt chapeau and gipsy 
locks, comes on deck, casting about her as an 
experienced mariner, the roving glances of her 
dark and winsome eye, she gathers up a ready 



i6o TEN DAYS ABROAD 

train. What age and clime, oh gentle woman, 
since social rites begun, have not bowed unto 
your soft and subtle charms ! The favored few 
only are permitted to inscribe their names on 
the rim of that rakish beaver. It was occupied 
by an array of conquests when the steamer sailed, 
and available space filled rapidly, once we were 
afloat. Before we reach the Narrows it should 
be at a premium. Several days before, its ap- 
pearance recalled the walls and ceilings of the 
Shakespeare house at Avon, where further 
handwriting is forbidden. 

Many others, too, there are on shipboard — 
a graceful California maid, whose sweet soprano 
is in demand for every duet, — ^the Boston girl 
with crimson hat, a Scotch-plaid gown, and 
laughing, half-shut eyes from which her glances 
stream, like rifts of summer sky through a 
passing cloud. There are eligible single gentle- 
men, with no other occupation than to please 
and to be pleased. Something of wonder, and 
mystery envelopes one of them at the first — 
a slight and prepossessing blonde, of genteel 



A PROFESSOR OR A MILLIONAIRE i6i 

manners and drooping moustache — an author, it 
was hinted, a university professor, or a milHon- 
aire incognito. Then an acquaintance addresses 
him as "doctor," and presently it becomes known 
that he is a dentist with large practice in a 
western city. He has spent the summer abroad 
in an extended vacation, from which he is now 
returning home. 

The "Doctor" is nice and fastidious in his 
fancies — especially as to ladies, always looking 
them fairly in the face, perhaps because that 
gives a better glimpse of the mouth, which from 
his extended experience, and the amount of 
treasure he has placed in many mouths, affords 
a kind of index to the age, fortune and character 
of the aile under consideration. It is also inti- 
mated that he is personally interested in an 
inspection of the market, and that he never yet 
had found the mouth and teeth that answered 
his expectations. In that bright New England 
girl, with the crimson hat and the laughing, half- 
shut eyes, he certainly displayed a marked and 
growing interest. I fancied that in this instance 



i62 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

his attention was not wholly concentrated on the 
mouth which was bow-shaped and small, and 
the teeth, which were pearls and genuine — 
themselves a treasure. The eyes, the expression, 
and doubtless the New England wit, had their 
influence. At times he lost that confident, dental 
equipoise — and there was an unexpected timidity, 
when he aided her on the swaying deck through 
the maze of steamer chairs, which was not 
consistent with the professional dignity of the 
dental minuet as it is practised in luxurious 
"parlors" when assisting the fair patient from 
an operating chair. 

Out of the evening concerts came the regular 
entertainments of the last nights on board ship, 
which levied on all talent. The first cabin made 
a respectable showing, and the second cabin did 
quite as well the night following ; but the steerage 
deserved the award for accomplishing even more 
under great difficulties. Their numbers were 
double those of the cabins, and their auditorium 
was deep in the bowels of the ship below the 
water belt. From the upper deck we could look 



VAUDEVILLE TALENT 163 

down the air shaft, thirty feet, upon their stage, 
though the air at this height became a trifle 
close and oppressive as it ascended. But neither 
audience nor players appeared to mind that. 
They had an elaborate bill lasting until after 
midnight, with repeated encores, song and dance, 
coster-singing, and a variety that would have 
made the reputation of a vaudeville house. Our 
steward, a bland, smiling and self-confident 
Scotchman, who plumed himself on his elocu- 
tionary talent, being "not an educated man," but 
one who had "obtained his experience by degrees" 
— and much practice, on patient ocean audiences — 
did no disdain to present his talent to the 
steerage having already given it in the cabins 
with encores; but in the lower deck on this 
occasion there was a larger array of competitive 
talent, and his reception was not so cordial. 

At last on the morning of the tenth day which 
was Sunday, we turned Montauk Point and stood 
off Long Island. Now as we neared the 
journey's end the fog lifted. It had gone 
entirely when we sighted the light-ship off Fire 



i64 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

Island. Services were in progress in the cabin 
conducted by an orthodox Presbyterian clergy- 
man from the West, who while suffering the 
tortures of sickness throughout the voyage, had 
framed his discourse — it was a fervid thesis 
upon another Fire Island, whose portrayal 
this warm morning, in the close cabin, was 
strikingly real, bringing forth a copious perspir- 
ation on both speaker and congregation — but 
an intimation that we should enter the harbor 
within a few hours, spread quickly, and it cleared 
the cabin forthwith. 

Then came the long line of Great South Bay 
on our northern horizon — sail boats and lighters 
in the distance — the Pilot Boat, the papers and 
the news of the world ; best of all, the Highland 
Light at Navesink, Sandy Hook and the white 
stretch of beach to Asbury reaching out as if 
to welcome and encompass our steamer^ and 
ensure the end of the voyage that afternoon. 
Trunks were quickly packed and strapped, and a 
cheerful throng swarmed the decks. 

"Hurrah! for the Light Ship!" shouted the 



HURRAH FOR EVERYTHING! 165 

hilarious downeaster, and every one hurrahed. 

''Hurrah for the Buoys!" and all hurrahed. 

"Hurrah for Rockaway! for Coney Island! 
The Elephant ! The distant bathers in the surf !" 

Back of the Jersey hills great, purple swelling, 
thunder-clouds loomed up, but rolled over to 
the north and east, muttering heavy rumbles, 
scattering flashes of forked light, pouring rain, 
and throwing a span of imperial dyes upon the 
retreating cohorts of storm as they vanished 
in the sunlight, leaving the blue empyrean — a 
New York summer sky. 

Within the Narrows the terraced lawns, on 
the high escarpments of Hamilton and Wads- 
worth, after the shower were lush, redolent and 
emerald as on a May morning, their "reeking 
tubes and iron shards" stretched at rest, with 
brown sides glistening, like strange, uncouth 
domesticated animals, blinking i' the sun. Brightly 
flashed the waters of the Upper Bay — above 
them the charming homes and cottages on 
Brooklyn shores ; the graceful outlines of the 
Bridge arch, and, center of all, the great city on 



i66 TEN DAYS ABROAD 

its own isle, beneath its glorious canopy — the 
realization of a radiant vision in the peaceful 
quiet of this Sunday afternoon. 

Crowded excursion steamers whistled. Their 
crowds shouted and waved welcomes to the 
incoming Furnessia, whose passengers waved 
again, while Liberty's giantess smiled down 
benignly. Steerage looked on in quiet wonder. 
Citizens of Manhatta and of the mighty Yankee 
nation sang "Home Again!" without regard to 
words until their throats were hoarse. Their 
hearts swelling with pride of their own land, the 
harbor in its beauty; the city in its power, big 
with events for the dawning century — full 
of promise for glorious and ringing deeds to be 
storied and sung ; and more potent for the future 
than all that has been, or that is in the world's 
foreign ports and shores. 

Up the broad Hudson with its banks rising 
in tier on tier of marvelous buildings to the skies, 
we moved, and glided presently into the harbor 
of the slip. An interval of greeting friends, 
the turmoil of trunks, and the scramble of 



AUF WIEDERSEHEN! 167 

customs on the long pier, the crowd thinning as 
night came on, until steamer and pier were 
well nigh deserted. Those who had haunted her 
decks and cabins for ten days past were scattered 
far and wide, when the moon rode forth upon 
the clouds over the tall buildings of Manhattan. 
Many had bidden their last farewells, and were 
already speeding away by train to the North, 
South, East and West — beyond all earthly power 
to reunite until Gabriel's trump. Others at home 
recounted their holiday as a pleasant dream, and 
retired to rest before entering anew upon the 
work-a-day world. 



APR. 18 1901 



!:'I"ARY OF CONGRESS 



019 904 530 1 



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